Are the Resurrection Accounts Credible?

[Imprecise Interrupt]

The Resurrection of Jesus is often put forward as the proof of the legitimacy of Christianity. It is typically stated that there are multiple attestations of the event, thereby rendering it believable. It is the credibility of these several attestations that I intend to call into question. Please note that I am not rejecting ipso facto the idea of a dead body coming back to life. This was supposed to be a miracle, after all. Neither am I concerned with trivialities such as how many women went to the tomb. It is the credibility of the several accounts, and therefore the alleged fact of the resurrection, that I find lacking, for reasons other than simply the issue of a resurrection from the dead taking place.

The question for debate is therefore: Are the scriptural accounts of the resurrection of Jesus credible evidence that the resurrection took place?

[Imprecise Interrupt]

You are the one who wants it to mean ‘see with the mind’ whenever possible.

Nope. Rather, I've repeatedly pointed out that the meaning must be based on the context of the passage in which it is used.

I have noticed that when you have no real counter-argument that you start accusing me of dishonesty and using phrases like ‘hand waving’ and ‘slam dunk’ (not a good phrase to use considering its famous misuse). Just sayin’

The bottom line is that we have a word which was used for both physical and spiritual seeing. It doesn't matter what the "primary" meaning is because the context determines what is meant. You're forced to concede that at this point. Progress.

“forced to concede� Once again you resort to pejorative language when you do not have an effective counterargument.

The context is that Paul has been contradicted about the resurrection claim and he comes up with an elaborate witness list to support the claim. For ΩΦΘΗ (was seen) to mean ‘see with the mind’ and not ‘see with the eyes’ would require the reader to assume that those 500+ witnesses said that they did not see Jesus with their eyes, only with their minds, and for someone to have told Paul (who was not around then) that they did not see Jesus with their eyes, only with their minds, and for Paul to be saying to the reader that they did not see Jesus with their eyes, only with their minds. The reader would naturally assume the primary meaning of the word (‘see with the eyes’) was intended because that would be an effective argument on Paul’s part. For Paul to say to skeptics that that they did not see Jesus with their eyes, only with their minds and expect to be believed is simply not credible.

How come you never want to quote the full argument?

Paul offers the 500+ witnesses as resurrection appearances,

Which could have been nothing more than a shared mass ecstatic worship experience like people have in church. Did groups of people really see the Virgin Mary in Zeitoun, Egypt? Did the Miracle of the Sun really happen in Portugal where people actually saw the sun bouncing around in the sky? Pareidolia and mass hysteria are actual documented things, you know?

Did those people in Egypt say they only saw the Virgin Mary with their minds? Did the people at Fatima say they only saw the sun bouncing around with their minds?

The real point is that the Gospels make no reference to this elaborate witness list even though Mark and Luke (at least) definitely read 1 Corinthians. Paul made up this witness list because he was challenged about the resurrection. There never were any 500+ witnesses. Why would Paul make this up and want it to mean the weak and challengeable ‘saw with their minds’ instead of the primary meaning of the word ‘saw with their eyes’ which meaning a reader would have no reason not to assume and good reason to assume?

then qualifies himself as having seen Jesus ‘as to one untimely born’ (1 Cor 15:8) He was not there to witness a resurrected Jesus as those (alleged) witnesses were.

Paul makes no distinction between what "appeared" or "was seen" by him from what "appeared" or "was seen" by the others. Paul uses the same verb ὤφθη for each "appearance" in the list as if to equate them. He nowhere indicates a difference in the type of appearances nor does he give any evidence of the Resurrected Christ being experienced in a more "physical" way than a vision/revelation in any of his letters. You're, therefore, left without any evidential basis in the earliest Christian material to assume the appearances were physical sightings.

Of course, he uses the same word ‘was seen’ as he did throughout his witness list. He wants to be counted as a legitimate missionary like the other missionaries, that being the meaning Paul uses for ‘apostle’. Why else would Paul end up the list with ‘then to all the apostles’ (even after the 500+ bystanders!) except that he wants to attach himself on as a missionary? Recall that Paul claims to have his own gospel different from what others are saying. He needs justification.

Paul does distinguish his experience from the others in describing it ‘as to one untimely born’. He was not around when all those others (allegedly) saw Jesus with their eyes in physical form. Since as you say the word ΩΦΘΗ (was seen) can mean ‘with the eyes’ or ‘with the mind’, why not use ‘with the eyes’ for the experience of all those witnesses and ‘with the mind’ for Paul, that being in a different context? That interpretation is fully compatible with Paul needing to qualify his experience as being at a different time when Jesus was no longer physically around. The fact is that you want the word to only and always to have the secondary meaning of ‘with the mind’ regardless of context even though that is simply not credible as the intended meaning for the witnesses.

Nonetheless, when Paul is challenged by other apostles about ‘his’ gospel, the ‘very chiefest’ ones, he comes up with the exotic ‘third heaven’ story in 2 Corinthians 12, which he wants to make as physical as he can get away with, saying that he might have gone there in the body or maybe not, and making the place he was taken to the paradise of the third heaven which is described in very physical terms in the apocrypha.

He saw Jesus in the third heaven as he says in 2 Cor 12. (Jacking up the story because some real Apostles showed up in Corinth and contradicted him about the Law.)

This was another vision, not the resurrection appearance. Can you please find me just one scholar who identifies what Paul describes in 2 Cor 12 to be the "resurrection appearance" from 1 Cor 15:8 and Gal. 1:16? I've only seen scholars argue the exact opposite.

Like the blogger you referenced recently, you are acting like all of this really happened for the sake of debunking it. Paul made it up as he went along to counter challenges. And there is no ‘resurrection appearance’ to Paul in 1 Corinthians 15. Paul tells us that Jesus ‘was seen’ (the actual meaning of the word) by Paul at a later time when it was no longer possible to see Jesus with the eyes as all those other witnesses did. Paul was ‘untimely born’, brought into the Christian fold, too late for that.

If there was no difference in how Paul saw Jesus, why would he need to quality it as something different? Paul is saying that all those people saw a real physical resurrected Jesus and he is trying to climb on the bandwagon.

The point is Paul doesn't qualify it as something different. He makes no distinction regarding the nature, quality, or type.

You don't actually respond to my argument here. Your replies are ignoring the more salient point which is the "revelation" from Gal. 1:16 is necessarily the "resurrection appearance" mentioned in 1 Cor 15:8. The "revelation" happened while Jesus was believed to be in heaven. It was not a physically seeing of Jesus. Despite this, Paul still claimed Jesus "appeared" to him. So obviously, by deductive logic, it necessarily follows that "revelations from heaven" (experiences that don't rely on physically seeing a physical person) qualified as resurrection appearances. You dodge the main point here which still stands unscathed.

‘Resurrection appearance’ is an inaccurate phrase. Nowhere in any canonical NT literature does anyone ever see the resurrection. The witnesses Paul cites in 1 Corinthians saw the risen Jesus in the flesh (Paul claims) without which his argument has no power against those skeptics, the point you do not want to address. Paul came on the scene too late to have made any such claim for himself.

If Galatians 1:16 is supposed to be the same as Corinthians 15:8, then obviously they are not the same type as the other witnesses or Paul would have not needed to qualify his experience ‘as to one untimely born’, that is, years later. If either or both are supposed to be the same as 2 Corinthians 12 then Paul sees Jesus in the third heaven and Paul is there with him, being told ‘his’ gospel. There is no broadcast from heaven.

Again, the point to keep in mind is that Paul is making it up as he goes along to claim special authority to have ‘his’ own gospel that is different from others. In 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians and Galatians, his authority was challenged and he responded with made up stories. Trying to connect one to the other is like lassoing smoke. There is not really anything substantial there to connect with except the common theme of ‘proving’ Paul’s authority to have ‘his’ gospel.

In Acts, Paul got knocked down and blinded and told he was backing the wrong horse. That is not ‘just’ a vision.

Acts says it was a vision. So the author of Acts did not mean it was a vision? The other physical aspects (which the author adds to the story) are irrelevant to the "vision" he had of Jesus from heaven. Moreover, Luke was modeling his Damascus Road vision report of off OT visions like Ezekiel has in Ez. 1 and Daniel 10:7 where only Daniel sees the vision and the others don't. Same word "optasia" is used in the LXX as in Acts 26:19.

There is nothing at all in Pauline literature about him getting visions from heaven. When Paul provides any details, he claims that he went to heaven and got information there. It sounds like he is intentionally avoiding the suspicious claim of a vision from heaven which would be dismissed as imaginary just like the claims of witnesses in 1 Corinthians 15 would be dismissed as imaginary if they were presented as ‘visions from heaven’, which obviously they were not intended to be understood as.

The Road to Damascus stories (three different ones BTW) are totally unlike the prophetic visions in the OT. In those stories, an individual is given information in the form of prophecies which he is supposed to tell people about. In Acts, Paul is knocked down and blinded and told by Jesus to stop the persecution. Paul is not given any knowledge to tell to other people. On the contrary, he is given the details of an already fully formed Christianity by other Christians. Luke is plainly avoiding the idea of Paul being given knowledge by God, Jesus etc. in order to get around Paul’s claims in his letters that he did get special knowledge from God and/or Jesus that was different from what was given the Apostles. Not at all like the visions of the OT.

Seeing something in their minds is not going to cut it. And Paul saying they only saw it with their minds is definitely not going to cut it with an audience already skeptical of his claims.

Again, with the "seeing with the mind" distinction which this ancient superstitious culture wouldn't have necessarily done. To them, they really thought they saw/experienced Jesus but, as I've shown, "seeing/experiencing" Jesus could be imagined through having "visions/revelations" from heaven. The point is visions convinced people so my argument still stands. Your reply is just a red herring.

If the (hypothetical) witnesses in 1 Corinthians thought they really experienced Jesus in the flesh, they would have said that they really experienced Jesus in the flesh and not say that they saw him only with their minds. The (hypothetical) person who told Paul about it would have reported that they said that they really experienced Jesus in the flesh and Paul would have told the Corinthians that all those people really experienced Jesus in the flesh. There would be no question whatsoever that they really experienced Jesus in the flesh, which is of course is critical to Paul’s argument against the skeptics.

Your argument is self-defeating.

Plus, Paul made all this up to win an argument. We know Mark read 1 Corinthians because he quotes from it and adapts its themes into his Last Supper scenario. We know Luke read 1 Corinthians because he quotes from it even more exactly than Mark. Yet neither of them, or any other Gospel writer, used Paul’s claimed list of witnesses, although Mark at least would surely want to use it. They did not believe it. Paul made it up.

The terms are not being used interchangeably. Did the 500+ witnesses get given secret knowledge that nobody else got? The vision was something very unusual. A visit to the third heaven. The revelation was the special knowledge.

We have no report of what the 500 actually saw or experienced so you can't claim that they all physically saw Christ. My plausible scenario (a mass ecstatic worship experience) explains the data perfectly.

You are assuming the 500+ witness thing really happened. If it did, then the participants would have reported that it was real. They would not have said they only saw it ‘with their minds’. If they did, it would not be believed and not passed on. But, assuming that there were really 500 witnesses making this claim, it would have been passed on to Paul and passed on by Paul as really happening.

But it never happened, as can be seen from the silence on the matter by Mark and Luke who we know read 1 Corinthians. Paul made it up to win an argument.

Paul says Jesus was seen by him in a different manner than all those witnesses. 1 Cor 15:8

Nope. He uses the same verb for each "appearance" in the list. No distinction is made. The words "untimely" and "last of all" are only indicators of the timing of the appearance.

As you keep reminding people, the word has more than one meaning.

The witnesses are clearly supposed to have seen Jesus with their eyes or Paul’s argument falls apart. Actually, both of his arguments, that Jesus was raised from the dead and that the righteous will be raised from the dead. Jesus appearing from heaven, where Paul says he came from in the first place, is no big deal. It has no bearing on anyone else getting raised from the dead. They did not come from heaven. And it sounds like a lot of imagination involved and not to be taken seriously, which obviously some Corinthians do not. But a bodily resurrection with witnesses seeing him ‘with the eyes’ is impressive and goes much further in convincing people that they too can be raised from the dead, which is exactly the point being argued.

Jesus was seen by Paul in some other way, as he makes clear in 2 Corinthians 12 when he needs big time justification for his claims after being contradicted by big time apostles. In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul goes to great lengths to demonstrate that he got ‘his’ gospel from Jesus in the third heaven, possibly in the body. In any case, it was supposed to be something real and in person. Or did the 500+ witnesses also go to the third heaven and get special revelation from Jesus like Paul and ‘his’ gospel?

The revelation to Paul took place in the third heaven as per 2 Cor 12. Paul was told things that even the Apostles were not told. Gal 1 says that God revealed (gave knowledge about) Jesus to Paul. No mention of third heaven or seeing Jesus.

Again, these are not the same experiences. Paul uses his "revelation" of Jesus from Gal. 1:16 as a "resurrection appearance" in 1 Cor 15:8. Moreover, this just proves my point. Paul's revelation (where he's given knowledge and doesn't see Jesus) proves that merely being "given knowledge" through spiritual/personal/subjective experiences could qualify as the Resurrected Christ "appearing." Thanks for that. You just shot yourself in the foot.

No ‘resurrection appearance’ anywhere in the Gospels. Wrong term.

Galatians 1 says that God told Paul that he was on the wrong track. Jesus was the way. That is the revelation in Galatian 1. In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul gets to see Jesus in the third heaven and is given a new private Gospel. That is where his authority allegedly comes from. If you want Galatians and 2 Corinthians to be separate, then Paul sees Jesus in the third heaven. That is how he justifies himself as an apostle like the apostles he mentions immediately preceding himself in the list in 1 Corinthians 15. If you want to conflate Galatians 1 and 2 Corinthians 12, then it is still the case, that Paul saw Jesus in the third heaven and got his authority as an apostle that way.

The thing to remember is that Paul makes it all up as he goes along whenever he is challenged. Looking for literal word by word consistency is a lost cause. The point still remains is that for Paul to have meant that all those witnesses only saw Jesus in their minds, is doubly self-defeating. It adds doubt to the idea of Jesus being raised from the dead instead of supporting it. And if taken seriously as actual visions from heaven it removes the connection between Jesus being raised from the dead (directly to heaven where he started out) and the future resurrection of the righteous which it is supposed to prove.

And there is still that ‘that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day’ issue. The spirit of Jesus had to hang around buried (a spirit was buried?) until the third day waiting to be raised up to heaven. Was God busy elsewhere? How would anyone know it was the third day if the only communication was visions broadcast from heaven?

Paul never says he saw the risen Jesus in person on earth. He deliberately distinguishes his experience as being of a different kind because he was not around when Jesus rose from the dead.

Paul makes no distinction therefore he distinguishes his experience? What kind of logic is that? Paul, in no way, indicates the appearance to him was different. Remember, he uses the same verb for each one.

And the verb has two meanings and Paul distinguishes his experience as too late to see the risen Jesus in the flesh. There is no contradiction between the witnesses seeing Jesus in the flesh with their eyes, without which Paul’s arguments fail, and Paul seeing Jesus later one, maybe with the mind or maybe with the eyes in the third heaven. Paul’s experience was definitely different from the witnesses.

The ESV translates it this way.
1 Corinthians 15
53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.

Why does the ESV translate it that way?

ΔΕΙ ΓΑΡ ΤΟ ΦΘΑΡΤΟ� ΤΟΥΤΟ Ε�ΔΥΣΑΣΘΑΙ ΑΦΘΑΡΣΙΑ� ΚΑΙ ΤΟ Θ�ΗΤΟ� ΤΟΥΤΟ Ε�ΔΥΣΑΣΘΑΙ ΑΘΑ�ΑΣΙΑ�
Must for* the(definite article) corruptible(adjective) this to-be-putting-on incorruption(noun) and the(definite article) mortal(adjective) this to-be-putting-on immortality(noun)
* Conjunction is second place in a clause as usual

The use of a definite article and an adjective implies a noun.

For the corruptible (implied noun) must be putting on incorruption and the mortal (implied noun) putting on immortality.

Gee, what noun do you think Paul was implying? What is it that is corruptible and mortal? ESV supplies ‘body’ as the implied noun.

1 Corinthians 15
42 So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.

Paul uses the word soma (body) 10 times in this passage including in 15:44 where it is used twice. To insist that Paul is not talking about a body in 15:53 is just weird. Unless of course you can find some other suitable noun that can be described as corruptible and mortal that at the resurrection of the dead will put on incorruption and immortality? No dancing around or links to someplace else. Just supply a noun.

Your link says that there is no connection between the seed and the plant that grows from it, that there is a ‘discontinuity’ between them. Am I supposed to take this seriously?

Aside: On another site years ago, someone did try to argue that the people back then were so stupid (his word) that they did not know that plants came from seeds. That all the talk connecting sowing and raising were mere coincidence. Like 5000 years of agriculture taught them nothing.

Paul’s audience would have understood very clearly that the references to sowing seeds and sowing bodies and plants coming from seeds and corruptible/mortal dead bodies being raised and putting on incorruptibility and Immortality are talking about physical resurrection.

And the NIV translates it this way - "For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality."

Paul is making a distinction between:

1. what happens to the resurrected dead

and

2. what happens to the people still alive at the return of Christ.

The perishable person (dead person) must "put on" imperishability and the mortal person (person still alive) must "put on" immortality.

My point still stands. The word for "body" is not in the Greek there so that necessarily has to be fed into the text.

Your point fails. The presence of a definite article and an adjective indicates an implied noun. What is that noun if it is not ‘body’, a word that Paul has already used ten times in this passage? But as expected you just danced around because as expected you do not have an answer.

1 Corinthians 15
51 Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. 53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.�

Everyone dead or alive will all be changed in the same way, as per verse 51. I see no indication of any separation between the living and the dead in any of the verses.


Party time coming up. Be back tomorrow. Maybe.

[Overcomer]

I'm sorry to be so slow in getting back to you, Imprecise Interrupt. Every time I come here I get side-tracked by other threads and use up my limited time with them. You wrote:

The disciples clearly believed that Jesus was resurrected. But the only evidence that the disciples believed that Jesus appeared to them is 1 Corinthians 15.

There are these:

Mary Magdalene ((John 2:11-18)
The other Mary, Salome, Joanna, and at least one other woman.
Simon Peter (Luke 24:34)
Cleopas and companion on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35)
All the disciples minus Thomas (Luke 24:36-43: John 20:19-25)
All the disciples including Thomas (John 20:26-29)
Seven disciples at the Sea of Tiberius (John 21:1-23.
Disciples and a large gathering at a mountain in Galilee (Matt. 28:16-17)
Disciples at Christ’s ascension (Luke 24:53; Acts 1:3-11).

You wrote:

I have addressed 1 Corinthians 15 in my post above. That none of the Gospel writers took this story seriously is a big red flag. That it is just a little too convenient of a story to support Paul’s argument about the possibility of resurrection is another red flag. (500 witnesses at the same time? And the Romans and Jewish authorities did not notice?)

I have already stated that this is a fallacious argument from silence. It holds no water.

You wrote:

Habermas plays rather fast and loose with this. He states that almost all scholars, including skeptics, accept 1 Corinthians. The actual case is that almost all scholars, including skeptics, accept that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians. But Habermas, by slick wording, conflates this with all those scholars accept that Paul was telling the truth.

I took Habermas' Credo Course on the resurrection. He didn't say that in the course or in any of the other writings I have read by him. Could you please provide an exact quotation as well as a verifiable source for your statement?

What Habermas did say is this:

Scholars of all ilks consider 1 Corinthians 15 to contain a pre-Pauline creed (Rom. 10:9; Philippians 2:2-6; 1Tim. 3:16; 2 Tim. 2:11-13 and 1 Corinthians 11 are other examples of creeds, but there are many more), that is, Paul didn’t write it, but only used it in this letter to the church in Corinth, saying that he is sharing what he had received from others (most likely Peter and James according to Bart Ehrman who is no friend of Christians and has no vested interested in promoting Christianity). Creeds were formulated in a matter of months following Christ’s resurrection (using 33 A.D. as that date). Their purpose was to summarize key elements of the gospel for easy memorization by those who were illiterate. Again, even Ehrman agrees with this as does atheist Bible scholar Gerd Ludemann.

You wrote:

A number of outside evidences support the truth of their belief in his resurrection.

The ‘outside evidences’ Habermas cites are Paul, the Gospels, and early writings by the Church fathers. These are not outside sources. They are all committed to the idea of the resurrection of Jesus. What they demonstrate is that there was an early belief in the resurrection of Jesus.

Again, he did not say that in his course or in any of the writings I have perused so I'm wondering what the source of your statement is. Habermas does note that there are a number of independent sources attesting to the resurrection. That isn't the same as "outside" sources.

You wrote that your OP was an "opposing theory" to Habermas' work, but I have dismissed it as a theory based on a fallacious argument and speculation. This is what makes Habermas' work so strong. He bases it on what historians of all ilks consider facts, not conjecture. It's called his minimal facts argument. It considers "only those data that are so strongly attested historically that they are granted by nearly every scholar who studies the subject, even the rather skeptical ones" (Gary R. Habermas and Michael R. Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2004), 44).

See here for a good summary:

https://crossexamined.org/the-minimal-f ... urrection/

[Imprecise Interrupt]

I'm sorry to be so slow in getting back to you, Imprecise Interrupt. Every time I come here I get side-tracked by other threads and use up my limited time with them. You wrote:

The disciples clearly believed that Jesus was resurrected. But the only evidence that the disciples believed that Jesus appeared to them is 1 Corinthians 15.

There are these:

Mary Magdalene ((John 2:11-18)
The other Mary, Salome, Joanna, and at least one other woman.
Simon Peter (Luke 24:34)
Cleopas and companion on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35)
All the disciples minus Thomas (Luke 24:36-43: John 20:19-25)
All the disciples including Thomas (John 20:26-29)
Seven disciples at the Sea of Tiberius (John 21:1-23.
Disciples and a large gathering at a mountain in Galilee (Matt. 28:16-17)
Disciples at Christ’s ascension (Luke 24:53; Acts 1:3-11).

All of those are from the Gospels written much later than the time of Jesus. There is a very obvious progression from Mark to Matthew to Luke to John, with each successive author plainly aware of the previous author and changing the resurrection story according to the needs of the successive author. Matthew ‘covering up’ for Mark and Luke changing everything from Galilee to Jerusalem clearly show this, as described in my Post #2 and elsewhere.

In short, these are not credible accounts of there being witnesses to a risen Jesus and not valid as evidence. And as always, Mark - the starting point - has no witnesses at all to a risen Jesus. As I said, while it is clear that the disciples believed that Jesus was resurrected, the only evidence is 1 Corinthians 15. Yet this is a highly questionable account.

You wrote:

I have addressed 1 Corinthians 15 in my post above. That none of the Gospel writers took this story seriously is a big red flag. That it is just a little too convenient of a story to support Paul’s argument about the possibility of resurrection is another red flag. (500 witnesses at the same time? And the Romans and Jewish authorities did not notice?)

I have already stated that this is a fallacious argument from silence. It holds no water.

It is a perfectly good argument. Throwing a label on it proves nothing.

We know that Mark read 1 Corinthians because he quotes from it and uses Paul’s sacrificial lamb image from it, combining the two to come up with the Last Supper narrative. Unfortunately, that leads to the Sanhedrin trial being planned for the first night of Passover, a total absurdity, and also to Diaspora ‘no lamb’ Passover practices being employed in Jerusalem while the Temple still stood, another absurdity. There is no doubt that Mark read 1 Corinthians. Yet his resurrection narrative very embarrassingly has no witnesses. If he believed Paul’s account was at all credible, he would have incorporated at least some of it.

We know that Luke read 1 Corinthians because he quotes even more precisely than Mark. Mark deviates from exact word for word transcription in places in order to develop phrases into events, such as making the bread and wine ritual into a Seder and an opportunity for reiterating Mark’s ongoing theme of John the Baptist being Elijah. Luke’s audience is mainly Gentile and subtleties concerning Seder practices would be lost on them. Yet despite having a copy of 1 Corinthians in front of him when copying that section, Luke chooses to simply write a resurrection version intended to reverse Matthew’s account without incorporating the elaborate list from 1 Corinthians 15.

The silence here speaks volumes, especially Mark’s silence. A story of hundreds and hundreds of witnesses that Mark knows about and chooses not to use even though he really needs it? As can be seen in many ways, Mark has access to early traditions about Jesus from sources other than Paul and none of them involve witnesses to the risen Jesus or he would have used them.

You wrote:

Habermas plays rather fast and loose with this. He states that almost all scholars, including skeptics, accept 1 Corinthians. The actual case is that almost all scholars, including skeptics, accept that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians. But Habermas, by slick wording, conflates this with all those scholars accept that Paul was telling the truth.

I took Habermas' Credo Course on the resurrection. He didn't say that in the course or in any of the other writings I have read by him. Could you please provide an exact quotation as well as a verifiable source for your statement?

What Habermas did say is this:

Scholars of all ilks consider 1 Corinthians 15 to contain a pre-Pauline creed (Rom. 10:9; Philippians 2:2-6; 1Tim. 3:16; 2 Tim. 2:11-13 and 1 Corinthians 11 are other examples of creeds, but there are many more), that is, Paul didn’t write it, but only used it in this letter to the church in Corinth, saying that he is sharing what he had received from others (most likely Peter and James according to Bart Ehrman who is no friend of Christians and has no vested interested in promoting Christianity). Creeds were formulated in a matter of months following Christ’s resurrection (using 33 A.D. as that date). Their purpose was to summarize key elements of the gospel for easy memorization by those who were illiterate. Again, even Ehrman agrees with this as does atheist Bible scholar Gerd Ludemann.

You wrote:

A number of outside evidences support the truth of their belief in his resurrection.

The ‘outside evidences’ Habermas cites are Paul, the Gospels, and early writings by the Church fathers. These are not outside sources. They are all committed to the idea of the resurrection of Jesus. What they demonstrate is that there was an early belief in the resurrection of Jesus.

Again, he did not say that in his course or in any of the writings I have perused so I'm wondering what the source of your statement is. Habermas does note that there are a number of independent sources attesting to the resurrection. That isn't the same as "outside" sources.

You wrote that your OP was an "opposing theory" to Habermas' work, but I have dismissed it as a theory based on a fallacious argument and speculation. This is what makes Habermas' work so strong. He bases it on what historians of all ilks consider facts, not conjecture. It's called his minimal facts argument. It considers "only those data that are so strongly attested historically that they are granted by nearly every scholar who studies the subject, even the rather skeptical ones" (Gary R. Habermas and Michael R. Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2004), 44).

See here for a good summary:

https://crossexamined.org/the-minimal-f ... urrection/

The three points from Habermas I addressed in Post #4 are from his book The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus page 210. Ref Yes, Habermas really did say those things.

I am unimpressed by scholars because they either have a pre-established conclusion they wish to reach, for or against, or because they are stuck in the long standing tradition that everything in the NT came from some prior source, an attitude embedded in biblical scholarship inherited from the days when it was forbidden to even imagine that the NT authors could possibly have made things up. So rather than dismiss my arguments as ‘fallacious argument and speculation’ or referring me to scholars, try addressing the arguments I put forth in Post #2 in detail.

[YahWhat]

The context is that Paul has been contradicted about the resurrection claim and he comes up with an elaborate witness list to support the claim.

No, the relevant context is that the "appearance" to Paul was a spiritual vision/revelation from heaven which he does not distinguish from the "appearances" to the others. Even if Paul "had been contradicted" that does not mean he understood his experience to be different than theirs, nor does it follow that they thought his experience was different. You have absolutely no evidence for that in the earliest Christian sources. Paul DOES NOT SAY "Jesus appeared to me in a vision only after the Ascension, whereas the others saw him physically and touched his body before he ascended to heaven." That distinction is never made. You're just reading it into the text when that chronology doesn't show up until Luke/Acts (which you seem to regard as entirely fictional anyway).

For ΩΦΘΗ (was seen) to mean ‘see with the mind’ and not ‘see with the eyes’ would require the reader to assume that those 500+ witnesses said that they did not see Jesus with their eyes, only with their minds, and for someone to have told Paul (who was not around then) that they did not see Jesus with their eyes, only with their minds, and for Paul to be saying to the reader that they did not see Jesus with their eyes, only with their minds. The reader would naturally assume the primary meaning of the word (‘see with the eyes’) was intended because that would be an effective argument on Paul’s part. For Paul to say to skeptics that that they did not see Jesus with their eyes, only with their minds and expect to be believed is simply not credible.

First of all, have you had time to survey all these Bible passages where people claimed to have visions? Because if so, I don't see how you can deny that Second Temple Jews placed great emphasis on "seeing" visions, and thus, was a visionary culture in which people claimed to have these types of experiences all the time. This makes it perfectly plausible that the "resurrection appearances" of Jesus were understood to be "visions" and one could argue that this was even expected given the socio-cultural background context.

Secondly, you do realize the distinction between seeing with the eyes/mind comes from modern interpreters, translators, linguists, philologists, etc who have surveyed all the Greek literature in which the verbs for seeing are used, correct? You are anachronistically applying the modern distinction back onto an ancient (visionary) culture which wouldn't have necessarily made the same distinction between seeing with the eyes/mind. This point is crucial to understand before moving forward.

"The emphasis rests on the revelatory initiative of the angel of God, who desires to make himself manifest, not upon the experience of the recipient. Thus the question as to how they see, whether with the physical eye or with the eye of the mind or the spirit, is left undetermined and unemphasized; it lies entirely outside the horizon of interest." Reginald Fuller, The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives, p. 30.

The point is they sincerely believed they actually saw/experienced Jesus and wouldn't have thought to question the mode or nature of the experience. To them, a "vision" was a divine sign from God, as real as any physical experience, and according to all those passages I linked above, they took these things seriously because they believed that the experiences provided a deeper understanding of reality.

Third, you just assume as a historical fact that it was implied the 500 must have "physically seen" Jesus but provide no argument or evidence. You just can't see how this would convince anyone. This is an argument from incredulity which is fallacious. The vision texts from the Hebrew Bible, Apocrypha, New Testament and other Greek literature demonstrate that "visions/revelations" were seen as even more important than physical sensory experiences by the people of this time period and as soon as you acknowledge this empirically supported fact, then it's quite easy to understand how this could convince people.

Lastly, let's assume for the sake of argument that these claims of Christ "appearing" after death weren't taken seriously by other gentiles 40 years or so after the death of Christ. As you know, none of the gospel authors found the appearance to the 500 important enough to narrate. Why is that? Could it have possibly been a mass shared spiritual encounter that wasn't taken seriously anymore by the time all the evangelists wrote? Well, guess what? That fits the data we have because as I show in my comparison of the Resurrection narratives, the story grows over time. Paul's spiritual/mystical Jesus evolves into a more physical/corporeal earthly person as the story develops.

So in a sense you're right. No one took the spiritual/mystical Christ story seriously anymore which is what prompted each evangelist to take liberty with all those embellishments we find.

How come you never want to quote the full argument?

Because your "full argument" is a distraction from the actual issue. It's just a red herring. I'm focusing on the nature of the appearances mentioned in 1 Cor 15:5-8. You're focusing on something else entirely and wasting my time.

Did those people in Egypt say they only saw the Virgin Mary with their minds? Did the people at Fatima say they only saw the sun bouncing around with their minds?

Again, you'd have to show that the ancient Jews would have made such a distinction.

The real point is that the Gospels make no reference to this elaborate witness list even though Mark and Luke (at least) definitely read 1 Corinthians. Paul made up this witness list because he was challenged about the resurrection. There never were any 500+ witnesses.

Interesting side note:

The Greek word for 500 πεντακοσίοις is very similar to the Greek word for Pentecost πεντηκοστῆς. So the original reference could have been to an unspecified number of people "experiencing" Jesus at Pentecost. This is somewhat supported by the testimony of John Chrysostom who pointed out that the word for “more than" (�πάνω) could actually translate to “above" as in “above in the sky� or from heaven. This interesting speculation combined with the fact that none of the gospel authors found the appearance to the 500 important enough to mention, may point in the direction of a possible scribal error in transmitting the texts πεντακοσίοις/πεντηκοστῆς.

Why would Paul make this up and want it to mean the weak and challengeable ‘saw with their minds’ instead of the primary meaning of the word ‘saw with their eyes’ which meaning a reader would have no reason not to assume and good reason to assume?

Again, prove that they would have made such a distinction. You're reading the text with your modern presuppositions which weren't necessarily shared by the people who produced these ancient claims/texts.

Paul does distinguish his experience from the others in describing it ‘as to one untimely born’.

Again, I've already pointed out that "untimely" is a reference to timing, not a distinction in nature. Paul is the one who was "untimely born."

"The remark that Jesus appeared "last of all" is not evidence that he distinguished the type of appearance he was granted from those of Peter and the twelve. On the contrary, it marks his experience as the last in a series of the same type of experiences. The remark that Jesus appeared to him "as to one prematurely born" (v. 8) does not imply that the nature of the appearance was any different. It was Paul who was different - he was not even a disciple yet. This interpretation is supported by the remark in the following verse that he was persecuting the church of God (i.e. even at the time that Jesus appeared to him)." - Adela Yarbro Collins, The Beginning of the Gospel, pg. 124. https://books.google.com/books?id=xa5KA ... &q&f=false

"The extraordinary metaphor of ‘aborted foetus’ (ektr�ma) caused endless trouble to commentators until Nickelsburg worked it out. It presupposes that Paul was called like a prophet from his mother’s womb (Gal. 1.15-16), and was as it were ‘born’ when he became the apostle to the Gentiles. Thus he was as it were ‘an aborted foetus’ when he was persecuting the church before his vocational ‘birth’. As was well known, the appearance of Jesus to him on the Damascus Road marked the point at which he ceased to persecute the churches and began to fulfil his vocation as apostle to the Gentiles." - Maurice Casey, Jesus of Nazareth, pg. 458 https://books.google.com/books?id=nOiRB ... &q&f=false

Also, Paul is alluding to the prophetic call of Jeremiah in Jer. 1:5 - "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." so reading in a reference that the "appearance" was different is wholly unnecessary.

He was not around when all those others (allegedly) saw Jesus with their eyes in physical form.

Quote the passage from Paul which says this. I bet you will come up empty handed because it doesn't exist. What's ironic is that you think the gospels are entirely fictional yet are appealing to Luke/Acts for the Ascension chronology that separates the appearances to the disciples from the one to Paul. That chronology doesn't exist in Paul's letters (the earliest Christian material).

Since as you say the word ΩΦΘΗ (was seen) can mean ‘with the eyes’ or ‘with the mind’, why not use ‘with the eyes’ for the experience of all those witnesses and ‘with the mind’ for Paul, that being in a different context? That interpretation is fully compatible with Paul needing to qualify his experience as being at a different time when Jesus was no longer physically around. The fact is that you want the word to only and always to have the secondary meaning of ‘with the mind’ regardless of context even though that is simply not credible as the intended meaning for the witnesses.

Again, my interpretation is that all of the appearances were of the exalted Lord from heaven, thus they simply could not have been the "physical seeing" type. The physical resurrection appearances develop later in the gospels. Every time you appeal to the statement "Jesus was no longer physically around" assumes the Luke/Acts chronology, not Paul's.

Nonetheless, when Paul is challenged by other apostles about ‘his’ gospel, the ‘very chiefest’ ones, he comes up with the exotic ‘third heaven’ story in 2 Corinthians 12, which he wants to make as physical as he can get away with, saying that he might have gone there in the body or maybe not, and making the place he was taken to the paradise of the third heaven which is described in very physical terms in the apocrypha.

I asked for a source from a scholar who identifies the experience in 2 Cor 12 with his "resurrection appearance" from 1 Cor 15:8/Gal. 1:16. It seems I'm left with no choice but to conclude you have no scholarly support or argument for that identification so I must dismiss your unfounded assertion. Notice how it reads "visions" and "revelations" in the plural. It's obvious that Paul had more than one, right?

Paul tells us that Jesus ‘was seen’ (the actual meaning of the word)

No, when the aorist form is used with the dative as in 1 Cor 15, it more accurately translates to "appeared" "made himself seen" or "showed himself."

by Paul at a later time when it was no longer possible to see Jesus with the eyes as all those other witnesses did.

Let me know when you actually find a passage from Paul which says this.

Paul was ‘untimely born’, brought into the Christian fold, too late for that.

A reference to "timing" obviously, and he was talking about his vocational birth where he ceased persecuting Christians and started preaching to the gentiles.

‘Resurrection appearance’ is an inaccurate phrase. Nowhere in any canonical NT literature does anyone ever see the resurrection.

By "resurrection appearance" I mean an appearance of the Resurrected Christ. This is just pedantic nit-picking.

The witnesses Paul cites in 1 Corinthians saw the risen Jesus in the flesh (Paul claims) without which his argument has no power against those skeptics, the point you do not want to address. Paul came on the scene too late to have made any such claim for himself.

Where does Paul say this or are you ready to admit you're reading in the chronology from Luke/Acts here?

If Galatians 1:16 is supposed to be the same as Corinthians 15:8, then obviously they are not the same type as the other witnesses or Paul would have not needed to qualify his experience ‘as to one untimely born’, that is, years later.

Ok, originally you argued that Paul meant both he and everyone else "saw Jesus with their eyes" due to him using horao/ophthe but now, after realizing the logic of my argument, you're entertaining the possibility that his appearance was different as in it was not a physical seeing with the eyes?

So is this a tacit admission that, at least, Paul was not claiming to "have seen" Jesus with his eyes? But realize, if you admit this, then it necessarily follows that "not physically seeing Jesus with your eyes" still counted as a "resurrection appearance" and you must concede the argument. If Paul can have a vision/revelation of Jesus and claim it as a "resurrection appearance" then it follows that the other disciples could have claimed the same thing.

If either or both are supposed to be the same as 2 Corinthians 12 then Paul sees Jesus in the third heaven and Paul is there with him, being told ‘his’ gospel. There is no broadcast from heaven.

You've been unable to support your assertion that 2 Cor 12 was the resurrection appearance mentioned in 1 Cor 15:8. Why didn't Paul mention that important bit of information when he was describing the vision he had? Obviously, it was a reference to another vision and not his conversion experience.

Again, the point to keep in mind is that Paul is making it up as he goes along to claim special authority to have ‘his’ own gospel that is different from others.In 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians and Galatians, his authority was challenged and he responded with made up stories. Trying to connect one to the other is like lassoing smoke. There is not really anything substantial there to connect with except the common theme of ‘proving’ Paul’s authority to have ‘his’ gospel.

"Making it up as he goes along" doesn't equal "therefore, he thought the appearances were different."

There is nothing at all in Pauline literature about him getting visions from heaven.

That's what visions are by definition. They're given by God who resides in heaven. By the time Paul was writing, the Risen Jesus was believed to be in heaven so where else was he supposed to appear from?

When Paul provides any details, he claims that he went to heaven and got information there. It sounds like he is intentionally avoiding the suspicious claim of a vision from heaven which would be dismissed as imaginary just like the claims of witnesses in 1 Corinthians 15 would be dismissed as imaginary if they were presented as ‘visions from heaven’, which obviously they were not intended to be understood as.

If Paul was actually concerned about his claims being "dismissed as imaginary" then why does he leave in the part about "Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows"?

The Road to Damascus stories (three different ones BTW) are totally unlike the prophetic visions in the OT. In those stories, an individual is given information in the form of prophecies which he is supposed to tell people about. In Acts, Paul is knocked down and blinded and told by Jesus to stop the persecution. Paul is not given any knowledge to tell to other people. On the contrary, he is given the details of an already fully formed Christianity by other Christians. Luke is plainly avoiding the idea of Paul being given knowledge by God, Jesus etc. in order to get around Paul’s claims in his letters that he did get special knowledge from God and/or Jesus that was different from what was given the Apostles. Not at all like the visions of the OT.

You're engaging in the fallacy of trying to find an exact match but ignoring the relevant overall theme. Compare Gen. 31:11-13, 46:2, Ex. 3:2-10 with Acts 9, 22, and 26.

The identifiable theme in the Old Testament for a "call vision" is:

1. Address or call.
2. Answer with question.
3. Introduction with charge.

The vision is similar to what happens in Job 4:12-16, Isa 6, Dan. 10:4-21, Ezek. 1:1-3:15, Amos 7.1-9:10, 1 Enoch 14, 4 Ezra 3:1-9, 25.

The "bright light" and "falling down" theme is found in Ezekiel's vision.

Ez. 1:4
I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north—an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light.

Ez. 1:27-28
I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him. Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. When I saw it, I fell facedown, and I heard the voice of one speaking.

Daniel 10:7 uses ὀπτασίαν (optasia) like Paul does in 2 Cor 12:1 and Acts 26:19.

"I, Daniel, alone saw the vision; the people who were with me did not see the vision, though a great trembling fell upon them, and they fled and hid themselves. So I was left alone to see this great vision."

Compare this to Acts 9:7

The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one.

Deut 4:12
Then the LORD spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice.

Seeing something in their minds is not going to cut it. And Paul saying they only saw it with their minds is definitely not going to cut it with an audience already skeptical of his claims.

Argument from incredulity and assuming they would have made the distinction between eye/mind seeing. Two fallacious appeals.

If the (hypothetical) witnesses in 1 Corinthians thought they really experienced Jesus in the flesh, they would have said that they really experienced Jesus in the flesh and not say that they saw him only with their minds. The (hypothetical) person who told Paul about it would have reported that they said that they really experienced Jesus in the flesh and Paul would have told the Corinthians that all those people really experienced Jesus in the flesh. There would be no question whatsoever that they really experienced Jesus in the flesh, which is of course is critical to Paul’s argument against the skeptics.

They wouldn't have even considered "in the flesh" because:

1 Cor 15:50
"Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God."

1 Cor 1:29
"No flesh (sarx) shall glory before God."

Col. 2:11
"In him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ"

Flesh is sinful - Romans 8.

The witnesses are clearly supposed to have seen Jesus with their eyes or Paul’s argument falls apart.

Have you even been paying attention to the debate we're having? That's not "clear" at all actually.

Galatians 1 says that God told Paul that he was on the wrong track. Jesus was the way. That is the revelation in Galatian 1.

Yes, this is an explicit reference to Paul's conversion experience just as in 1 Cor 15:8 where he says Jesus "appeared" to him.

Note the genetic link:

Gal. 1:13
For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it.

1 Cor 15:9
For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul gets to see Jesus in the third heaven and is given a new private Gospel.

This was a different vision, not his conversion experience.

And there is still that ‘that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day’ issue. The spirit of Jesus had to hang around buried (a spirit was buried?) until the third day waiting to be raised up to heaven. Was God busy elsewhere? How would anyone know it was the third day if the only communication was visions broadcast from heaven?

The "third day" reference comes from the Scriptures, Hosea 6:2 for instance. Jonah was in the whale for three days. The "three days" is just a theological symbol, not an actual reference to a historical passing of time. Jesus died, was buried, was raised (to heaven) and then he "appeared" "made himself seen" "showed himself" "was revealed" - Gal. 1:16.

And the verb has two meanings and Paul distinguishes his experience as too late to see the risen Jesus in the flesh. There is no contradiction between the witnesses seeing Jesus in the flesh with their eyes, without which Paul’s arguments fail, and Paul seeing Jesus later one, maybe with the mind or maybe with the eyes in the third heaven. Paul’s experience was definitely different from the witnesses.

Lol! This assumes an intervening ascension between the apostles sightings and Paul's vision. Where does Paul make note of such an intervening ascension?

Answer: He doesn't so you're necessarily appealing to Luke/Acts for this chronological distinction.

The use of a definite article and an adjective implies a noun.

For the corruptible (implied noun) must be putting on incorruption and the mortal (implied noun) putting on immortality.

Gee, what noun do you think Paul was implying? What is it that is corruptible and mortal? ESV supplies ‘body’ as the implied noun.

Your point fails. The presence of a definite article and an adjective indicates an implied noun. What is that noun if it is not ‘body’, a word that Paul has already used ten times in this passage? But as expected you just danced around because as expected you do not have an answer.

Everyone dead or alive will all be changed in the same way, as per verse 51. I see no indication of any separation between the living and the dead in any of the verses.

The nouns/subjects are the previously mentioned "we" who "will not all sleep" (obvious reference to people who are not dead) and the "the dead" who "will be raised imperishable" from verse 52.

Read the entire passage.

1 Cor 15:51-54
Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.�

Notice how Paul makes a distinction between those alive and those dead at the Parousia (return of Christ). The "we will not all sleep" is a clear reference to those who will still be alive when Christ returns. People who are still alive won't be resurrected (because they're not dead) but will literally have their bodies transformed (we will all be changed). This distinction carries on in verse 52 - the *dead* will be raised imperishable and *we* will be changed (separates the dead who will be "raised imperishable" from the "we who will be changed"). Since the dead are "raised imperishable" they need not undergo a "change." That's what happens to the people still left alive when Christ returns. Verses 53-54 - perishable (dead) -> imperishable and the mortal (those alive) -> immortality. Paul is not saying the dead will be changed. Rather, based upon a proper analysis of the Greek:

"Thus the 'we shall be changed' of v. 52 would indicate that the 'we shall all be changed' of v. 51 refers to the universal transformation of Christians alive at the parousia, rather than to the transformation of all Christians, survivors and deceased, at the parousia." - pg. - Murray J. Harris, pg. 179 https://books.google.com/books?id=tejCz ... &q&f=false

This distinction is corroborated by what Paul says in 1 Thess 4:16-17.

For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.

Paul uses the word soma (body) 10 times in this passage including in 15:44 where it is used twice. To insist that Paul is not talking about a body in 15:53 is just weird.

Just weird? I smell another argument from incredulity.

Unless of course you can find some other suitable noun that can be described as corruptible and mortal that at the resurrection of the dead will put on incorruption and immortality? No dancing around or links to someplace else. Just supply a noun.

I think I just did that.

Your link says that there is no connection between the seed and the plant that grows from it, that there is a ‘discontinuity’ between them. Am I supposed to take this seriously?

There is continuity of the person, not necessarily the physical corpse.

Paul’s audience would have understood very clearly that the references to sowing seeds and sowing bodies and plants coming from seeds and corruptible/mortal dead bodies being raised and putting on incorruptibility and Immortality are talking about physical resurrection.

Oh really? Here's how Theophilus of Antioch understood it:

"A seed of wheat, for example, or of the other grains, when it is cast into the earth, first dies and rots away, then is raised, and becomes a stalk of grain." - To Autolycus, ch. 13.

So the physical body "rots away"? Hmm. But I thought the physical body that died, rises again....Hmm. I guess Paul wasn't talking about the revivification of physical corpses then.

[Imprecise Interrupt]

The context is that Paul has been contradicted about the resurrection claim and he comes up with an elaborate witness list to support the claim.

No, the relevant context is that the "appearance" to Paul was a spiritual vision/revelation from heaven which he does not distinguish from the "appearances" to the others. Even if Paul "had been contradicted" that does not mean he understood his experience to be different than theirs, nor does it follow that they thought his experience was different. You have absolutely no evidence for that in the earliest Christian sources. Paul DOES NOT SAY "Jesus appeared to me in a vision only after the Ascension, whereas the others saw him physically and touched his body before he ascended to heaven." That distinction is never made. You're just reading it into the text when that chronology doesn't show up until Luke/Acts (which you seem to regard as entirely fictional anyway

No, the relevant context is that Paul has been contradicted about the resurrection claim and he comes up with an elaborate witness list to support the claim. For ΩΦΘΗ (was seen) to mean ‘see with the mind’ and not ‘see with the eyes’ would require the readers in Corinth to assume:

* That those 500+ witnesses said that they did not see Jesus with their eyes, only with their minds and

* That someone told Paul (who was not around then) that the 500+ witnesses did not see Jesus with their eyes, only with their minds and

* That Paul is saying to the reader that the 500+ witnesses did not see Jesus with their eyes, only with their minds and expect to be believed by those who already doubted the resurrection story.

The reader would naturally assume the primary meaning of the word (‘see with the eyes’) was intended because that would be an effective argument on Paul’s part. For Paul to say to skeptics that that they did not see Jesus with their eyes, only with their minds and expect to be believed is simply not credible. It would also provide no support for Paul’s main argument that everyone could be raised from the dead, not just this divine being who came from heaven anyway going back there.

That is the argument you refuse to address. Simply repeating the claim that people then could not tell the difference between seeing with the eyes and seeing with the mind does not work. If they could not tell the difference, why insist that they claimed to have seen it with their minds, which is what you want Paul to want the Corinthians to believe. Why would Paul want them to accept the weaker of the two meanings of the word, when the primary meaning is the stronger one?

What really happened is that Paul was challenged and came up with a story about hundreds and hundreds of witnesses to back him up. Paul distinguishes his (alleged) experience from their (alleged) experiences by saying that he came along too late to see ‘the real thing’. If he meant that it was only about seeing a broadcast from heaven with his mind, why would the timeframe matter? What Paul needs to do is invent a special connection between him and Jesus so that he can claim to have authority to preach ‘his’ gospel, which differs from what even the real Apostles were saying. He comes as close as he can get away with. He did not have a coherent backstory. He made it up as he went along, even to the point of saying that he went to the third heaven to see Jesus, possibly even in the body. That was in reaction to being contradicted yet again, this time about details of ‘his’ gospel, possibly about the Law, Paul’s bugaboo. But this is not a vision from heaven but an encounter in the third heaven. Again, a reminder that the third heaven was imagined in a very physical manner. Paul needs it to sound real or he would not be believed. This is why he needs to have the (alleged) 500+ witnesses having seen Jesus with their eyes.

The issue of ‘Where is Jesus now?’ never got asked by anyone. Believing in the resurrection (or not as in Corinth) was what it was all about. Jesus was obviously not around but details like that never hindered faith for those who wanted to believe. Nobody got very analytic about it until Luke. Even as late as Matthew (before Luke) it is not addressed, although Matthew very definitely is on the physical resurrection team.

The real fact of the matter is that there never were any witnesses to the risen Jesus. Mark, with his access to early traditions, has no witnesses and a story so suspicious there is no way anyone would have invented it if it were not the case. The original belief was that Jesus rose bodily from the dead based on nothing more than an empty tomb, someone saying that Jesus got up and went to Galilee and the desire to accept the resurrection as true. Mark, who definitely had read 1 Corinthians, places no credibility in Paul’s over the top witness list even though it would have made his story more believable. Paul made stuff up to win an argument, as he did in Galatians and 2 Corinthians when he was challenged. Trying to fit them together in a coherent overall picture and draw conclusions is a waste of time. Paul made up each of them at a different time whenever he was challenged. None of these represent anything real.

For ΩΦΘΗ (was seen) to mean ‘see with the mind’ and not ‘see with the eyes’ would require the reader to assume that those 500+ witnesses said that they did not see Jesus with their eyes, only with their minds, and for someone to have told Paul (who was not around then) that they did not see Jesus with their eyes, only with their minds, and for Paul to be saying to the reader that they did not see Jesus with their eyes, only with their minds. The reader would naturally assume the primary meaning of the word (‘see with the eyes’) was intended because that would be an effective argument on Paul’s part. For Paul to say to skeptics that that they did not see Jesus with their eyes, only with their minds and expect to be believed is simply not credible.

First of all, have you had time to survey all these Bible passages where people claimed to have visions? Because if so, I don't see how you can deny that Second Temple Jews placed great emphasis on "seeing" visions, and thus, was a visionary culture in which people claimed to have these types of experiences all the time. This makes it perfectly plausible that the "resurrection appearances" of Jesus were understood to be "visions" and one could argue that this was even expected given the socio-cultural background context.

As I have said earlier, these were always about some message being conveyed. What was the message supposedly given to the 500+ witnesses? Did they each get a private gospel like Paul? If the message they got was simply that Jesus was in heaven, so what? Jesus, who according to Paul came from heaven, went back to heaven again as a spirit. What good does that do anyone? How does this relate to the promised resurrection of all those who did not originally come from heaven? But a physical bodily resurrection is something people can relate to. Not just the divine Jesus going back home again, but the human Jesus coming out of the grave. If that is possible, then it is possible for ordinary humans to get resurrected. And that is the whole point of 1 Corinthians 15.

Secondly, you do realize the distinction between seeing with the eyes/mind comes from modern interpreters, translators, linguists, philologists, etc who have surveyed all the Greek literature in which the verbs for seeing are used, correct? You are anachronistically applying the modern distinction back onto an ancient (visionary) culture which wouldn't have necessarily made the same distinction between seeing with the eyes/mind. This point is crucial to understand before moving forward.

"The emphasis rests on the revelatory initiative of the angel of God, who desires to make himself manifest, not upon the experience of the recipient. Thus the question as to how they see, whether with the physical eye or with the eye of the mind or the spirit, is left undetermined and unemphasized; it lies entirely outside the horizon of interest." Reginald Fuller, The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives, p. 30.

The point is they sincerely believed they actually saw/experienced Jesus and wouldn't have thought to question the mode or nature of the experience. To them, a "vision" was a divine sign from God, as real as any physical experience, and according to all those passages I linked above, they took these things seriously because they believed that the experiences provided a deeper understanding of reality.

If there was no distinction between seeing with the mind and seeing with the eyes, then why are you claiming that in the scenario Paul presents the witnesses definitely only saw Jesus with their minds? If they could not tell the difference (like seriously?) why would they not have reported that they saw Jesus with their eyes? And as always, why would Paul want the skeptical Corinthians to think they only saw Jesus with their minds and undermine his own argument?

Third, you just assume as a historical fact that it was implied the 500 must have "physically seen" Jesus but provide no argument or evidence. You just can't see how this would convince anyone. This is an argument from incredulity which is fallacious. The vision texts from the Hebrew Bible, Apocrypha, New Testament and other Greek literature demonstrate that "visions/revelations" were seen as even more important than physical sensory experiences by the people of this time period and as soon as you acknowledge this empirically supported fact, then it's quite easy to understand how this could convince people.

I am not assuming any historical fact at all about witnesses. I am saying and have been saying quite a few times now that it never happened]/i]. Paul made it up to win an argument after having been contradicted.

And I have provided a most powerful argument for thinking that Paul meant ‘with the eyes’ that you simply ignore because you have no answer. But in case you missed it here it is again.

For ΩΦΘΗ (was seen) to mean ‘see with the mind’ and not ‘see with the eyes’ would require the readers in Corinth to assume:

* That those 500+ witnesses said that they did not see Jesus with their eyes, only with their minds and

* That someone told Paul (who was not around then) that the 500+ witnesses did not see Jesus with their eyes, only with their minds and

* That Paul is saying to the reader that the 500+ witnesses did not see Jesus with their eyes, only with their minds and expect to be believed by those who already doubted the resurrection story.

The reader would naturally assume the primary meaning of the word (‘see with the eyes’) was intended because that would be an effective argument on Paul’s part. For Paul to say to skeptics that that they did not see Jesus with their eyes, only with their minds and expect to be believed is simply not credible. It would also provide no support for Paul’s main argument that everyone could be raised from the dead, not just this divine being who came from heaven anyway going back there.

As can be seen from the quote from Reginald Fuller, he believes in a supernatural event having taken place. I do not. He also thinks it is irrelevant whether it was with the eyes or with the mind, not that he insists that it was with the mind. I have been showing that it is totally relevant and that it is essential that Paul wants the Corinthians to accept that the witnesses saw a physically bodily resurrected Jesus with their eyes both for credibility reasons and as essential to his main argument that this relates to everyone and not just to a special being who has gone back to heaven where he came from anyway. I might add that this would hardly be something the skeptical Corinthians would have objected to. It is quite clear that they were objecting to the idea of a bodily resurrection.

Lastly, let's assume for the sake of argument that these claims of Christ "appearing" after death weren't taken seriously by other gentiles 40 years or so after the death of Christ. As you know, none of the gospel authors found the appearance to the 500 important enough to narrate. Why is that? Could it have possibly been a mass shared spiritual encounter that wasn't taken seriously anymore by the time all the evangelists wrote? Well, guess what? That fits the data we have because as I show in my comparison of the Resurrection narratives, the story grows over time. Paul's spiritual/mystical Jesus evolves into a more physical/corporeal earthly person as the story develops.

No, the story did not grow over time. If you want Mark and the other Gospels to have developed from Paul’s story, it would not have grown. It would have shrunk. Mark, possessor of other early traditions, has no witnesses. Matthew very transparently covers up for Mark’s suspicious story, adding a few witnesses. Mark was Jewish, not gentile, as can be seen by subtle references such as the fourth cup at Seder being for Elijah. Matthew was not only Jewish, he was writing to an observant Jewish audience. Where does the gentile part fit in?

Mark et al. did not take Paul’s story seriously because it is too over the top. It sounds invented.

So in a sense you're right. No one took the spiritual/mystical Christ story seriously anymore which is what prompted each evangelist to take liberty with all those embellishments we find.

No one took the over the top story presented by Paul seriously because it was over the top and Mark had found an early tradition that totally contradicted it. Mark’s original story is so suspicious of grave robbery and a shill that there is no way he made it up. All of the subsequent embellishments are for clearly discernible reasons that have nothing to do with Paul’s invented story.

How come you never want to quote the full argument?

Because your "full argument" is a distraction from the actual issue. It's just a red herring. I'm focusing on the nature of the appearances mentioned in 1 Cor 15:5-8. You're focusing on something else entirely and wasting my time.

What you mean is that you cannot answer my argument, which destroys your argument. I have also addressed your argument on its own merits and shown that it does not hold water. Paul needs to establish himself as an apostle even though he was not around when all those other (alleged) witnesses were.

More to come. Got to repair various damages to the house resulting from vacationer’s kids. Tomorrow is supposed to be not so ferocious a day, heat and humidity wise, as today. Hopefully I can get it done then. Yes, at 77 I still do my most of my own work despite my legs. Hired help around here sucks.

[Imprecise Interrupt]

Did those people in Egypt say they only saw the Virgin Mary with their minds? Did the people at Fatima say they only saw the sun bouncing around with their minds?

Again, you'd have to show that the ancient Jews would have made such a distinction.

You are the one who introduced those people to support your argument. Now you want to back away from that because it does not support your argument. You are the one who needs to demonstrate that they would have reported their (alleged) experiences as only in their minds if they supposedly cannot tell the difference.

The real point is that the Gospels make no reference to this elaborate witness list even though Mark and Luke (at least) definitely read 1 Corinthians. Paul made up this witness list because he was challenged about the resurrection. There never were any 500+ witnesses.

Interesting side note:

The Greek word for 500 πεντακοσίοις is very similar to the Greek word for Pentecost πεντηκοστῆς. So the original reference could have been to an unspecified number of people "experiencing" Jesus at Pentecost. This is somewhat supported by the testimony of John Chrysostom who pointed out that the word for “more than" (�πάνω) could actually translate to “above" as in “above in the sky� or from heaven. This interesting speculation combined with the fact that none of the gospel authors found the appearance to the 500 important enough to mention, may point in the direction of a possible scribal error in transmitting the texts πεντακοσίοις/πεντηκοστῆς.

That would require more than a scribal error. It would require replacing a hypothetical original ἄνωθεν (an adverb meaning ‘from above’) with �πάνω (an adjective meaning physically over or numerically greater), a word that would never take ‘from’ and would require a noun for it to modify. It would also make the use of the word �φάπαξ (an adverb meaning ‘at once’) rather odd. Was seen by an unspecified number of people at the same time? But with a large number of people, like more than 500, ‘at the same time’ works very well. No scribal error here. It would take a deliberate change of several words. The question is Why? Sorry no, I do not buy this one. The similarity between the words for 500 and for Pentecost is that Pentecost is derived from the word for 50.

Why would Paul make this up and want it to mean the weak and challengeable ‘saw with their minds’ instead of the primary meaning of the word ‘saw with their eyes’ which meaning a reader would have no reason not to assume and good reason to assume?

Again, prove that they would have made such a distinction. You're reading the text with your modern presuppositions which weren't necessarily shared by the people who produced these ancient claims/texts.

Prove that they would not have made such a distinction. Or are you saying that people walked around all day not knowing if they were seeing with their eyes or with their minds? Strong’s distinguishes 5 different senses of the word hora� and the primary one is to see with the eyes.

Paul does distinguish his experience from the others in describing it ‘as to one untimely born’.

Again, I've already pointed out that "untimely" is a reference to timing, not a distinction in nature. Paul is the one who was "untimely born."

"The remark that Jesus appeared "last of all" is not evidence that he distinguished the type of appearance he was granted from those of Peter and the twelve. On the contrary, it marks his experience as the last in a series of the same type of experiences. The remark that Jesus appeared to him "as to one prematurely born" (v. 8) does not imply that the nature of the appearance was any different. It was Paul who was different - he was not even a disciple yet. This interpretation is supported by the remark in the following verse that he was persecuting the church of God (i.e. even at the time that Jesus appeared to him)." - Adela Yarbro Collins, The Beginning of the Gospel, pg. 124. https://books.google.com/books?id=xa5KA ... &q&f=false

"The extraordinary metaphor of ‘aborted foetus’ (ektr�ma) caused endless trouble to commentators until Nickelsburg worked it out. It presupposes that Paul was called like a prophet from his mother’s womb (Gal. 1.15-16), and was as it were ‘born’ when he became the apostle to the Gentiles. Thus he was as it were ‘an aborted foetus’ when he was persecuting the church before his vocational ‘birth’. As was well known, the appearance of Jesus to him on the Damascus Road marked the point at which he ceased to persecute the churches and began to fulfil his vocation as apostle to the Gentiles." - Maurice Casey, Jesus of Nazareth, pg. 458 https://books.google.com/books?id=nOiRB ... &q&f=false

I have been saying for some time now that it means that Paul was not around when all those witnesses (allegedly) were, and his experience was therefore at a later time. That is because it was taught that way when I was in Theology class 56 years ago, long before Nicklesburg ‘discovered’ it. By being too late, his experience was not of the same character. If it were of the same nature, he would not have distinguished it in any fashion at all because it would have boosted his status in his quest to be considered an apostle. This points to Paul using horao in a different sense for himself than for the witnesses. (You do remember that it has multiple sense as per Strong’s, right?) They saw it with their eyes on earth. He did not. Later on, when challenged again, about his authority, he came up with a more specific and much more exotic story about being taken to the third heaven to be told all kinds of stuff that apparently Jesus forgot to tell the Apostles.

Also, Paul is alluding to the prophetic call of Jeremiah in Jer. 1:5 - "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." so reading in a reference that the "appearance" was different is wholly unnecessary.

On the contrary, as Nicklesburg (and Father Jack) pointed out that, Paul was not set apart before he was born. His birth was untimely both in the sense of being at the wrong time. Father Jack also noted that it confers the sense of being born dead. The word Paul uses �κτ�ώματι is the dative masculine singular of ἔκτ�ωμα (ektr�ma). The word is found in the Septuagint (which Paul used) in these passages, as per the English translation at http://www.ecmarsh.com/lxx/ The Greek can be found at https://en.katabiblon.com/us/?text=LXX

Numbers 12:12 10 And the cloud departed from the tabernacle; and, behold, Mariam was leprous, white as snow; and Aaron looked upon Mariam, and, behold, she was leprous. 11 And Aaron said to Moses, I beseech thee, my lord, do not lay sin upon us, for we were ignorant wherein we sinned. 12 Let her not be as it were like death, as an abortion coming out of his mother’s womb, when the disease devours the half of the flesh.

Ecclesiastes 6:3 If a man beget a hundred children, and live many years, yea, however abundant the days of his years shall be, yet if his soul shall not be satisfied with good, and also he have no burial; I said, An untimely birth is better than he.

Job 3:16 or I should have been as an untimely birth proceeding from his mother’s womb, or as infants who never saw light.

Paul was not formed in his mother’s womb to be a prophet like Ezekiel. He was born into Judaism, specifically law-centric Pharisaic Judaism, and he persecuted Christians. His former life was aborted when he (metaphorically) died to that life and became alive as a Christian. Paul frequently uses the image of bring dead to sin (or to the law) and alive to God in Jesus Christ.

He was not around when all those others (allegedly) saw Jesus with their eyes in physical form.

Quote the passage from Paul which says this. I bet you will come up empty handed because it doesn't exist. What's ironic is that you think the gospels are entirely fictional yet are appealing to Luke/Acts for the Ascension chronology that separates the appearances to the disciples from the one to Paul. That chronology doesn't exist in Paul's letters (the earliest Christian material).

As I have argued repeatedly, and you have repeatedly ignored, for Paul to have meant for the witnesses in 1 Corinthians 15 to have seen only with the mind and not with the eyes would undercut his argument that they really saw something really happened. The context is that he was contradicted on the matter and is arguing back to maintain his claim for apostleship. The primary meaning of the word and certainly the meaning the readers in Corinth would assume is to see with the eyes. Paul says that he saw Jesus later and when his authority as an apostle is questioned by apparently real Apostles he comes up with a story of seeing Jesus and getting ‘his’ gospel from him in the third heaven, not from heaven.

The ascension events in Luke and Acts were invented to explain why Jesus was not around anymore. Mark’s early tradition has Jesus go to Galilee after rising from the dead with no follow up on that. No witnesses. Matthew’s awkward and rather skeletal description of a trip to Galilee has Jesus apparently saying farewell but still no answer to where Jesus is ’now’.

That is, the ascension story does not appear in any form until the end of Luke many years after Paul and it is definitely a bodily ascension. Yet you want there to have been a spiritual ascension. Where does that ascension story come from? In Paul’s time, it was quite clear that Jesus was not around anymore. Paul needs a physical resurrection as proof of his future resurrection thesis. Mass imaginings are not going to impress the skeptical Corinthians. Since none of the Gospel writers, even those who we know for sure read 1 Corinthians, make use of Paul’s claim of hundreds of witnesses, it is clear Paul made it up to win the argument. And considering that Paul’s whole gospel depends on it, he would want to make it as strong as possible. Really seeing a risen Jesus with the eyes is strong. ‘Visions from heaven’ is weak.

Also, if Paul originally said to the Corinthians on his visit (before 1 Corinthians) that the resurrection sightings were all in the mind and that things of that sort were commonly accepted, why would they have taken issue with it as they clearly did.

1 Corinthians 15:12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?

Visions from heaven that simply show that Jesus went back where he came from (an important element in Paul’s gospel) would have no bearing on a future resurrection of the righteous. It has to be intended as a physical resurrection or the argument has no value for mere mortals. Paul must have intended the Corinthians to understand that the witnesses saw a physical Jesus walking around or the argument has no credible basis.

Since as you say the word ΩΦΘΗ (was seen) can mean ‘with the eyes’ or ‘with the mind’, why not use ‘with the eyes’ for the experience of all those witnesses and ‘with the mind’ for Paul, that being in a different context? That interpretation is fully compatible with Paul needing to qualify his experience as being at a different time when Jesus was no longer physically around. The fact is that you want the word to only and always to have the secondary meaning of ‘with the mind’ regardless of context even though that is simply not credible as the intended meaning for the witnesses.

Again, my interpretation is that all of the appearances were of the exalted Lord from heaven, thus they simply could not have been the "physical seeing" type. The physical resurrection appearances develop later in the gospels. Every time you appeal to the statement "Jesus was no longer physically around" assumes the Luke/Acts chronology, not Paul's.

Your interpretation does not work in the face of all the counter-arguments I have presented and that you chose not to address. Show me verses where Paul says that Jesus spiritually ascended. It seems that you are dependent on Luke and Acts for introducing an ascension of any kind into Paul. Paul only needs the physical resurrection story for his purposes. He does not need to describe an ascension. Jesus was obviously no longer around so where would he be? Back in heaven where he lived all along.

As can be seen from Mark’s resurrection non-story, the original idea was merely the claim of a physical resurrection and a sojourn to Galilee backed up by only an empty tomb. No witnesses to anything. But it would be just what followers of Jesus would want to hear. And so the resurrection story spread. A physical, empty tomb kind of resurrection because why would the people who saw Jesus die put any credence in anything less?

Oddly, Matthew’s follow up to Mark has people go to Galilee to see the risen Jesus but ‘they doubted’. This is the correct translation of the word used, not ‘some doubted’ as generally presented. Matthew represented a community of law-observant Jewish Christians. Might he have been conveying an old tradition preserved from the early days of Jewish Christianity in which some people went to Galilee to see the risen Jesus as Mark’s young man said and did not find any trace of Jesus there? I am at a loss as to why, if Matthew made up the whole Galilee episode, he would say ‘they doubted’.

Nonetheless, when Paul is challenged by other apostles about ‘his’ gospel, the ‘very chiefest’ ones, he comes up with the exotic ‘third heaven’ story in 2 Corinthians 12, which he wants to make as physical as he can get away with, saying that he might have gone there in the body or maybe not, and making the place he was taken to the paradise of the third heaven which is described in very physical terms in the apocrypha.

I asked for a source from a scholar who identifies the experience in 2 Cor 12 with his "resurrection appearance" from 1 Cor 15:8/Gal. 1:16. It seems I'm left with no choice but to conclude you have no scholarly support or argument for that identification so I must dismiss your unfounded assertion. Notice how it reads "visions" and "revelations" in the plural. It's obvious that Paul had more than one, right?

Oh, are we at the ‘appeal to authority’ stage? Many scholars are either out to debunk the Bible (the resurrection was all imaginary) or support the Bible (it all really happened). But just about all of them are stuck in a thought pattern that assumes that the authors got their information from earlier sources. This is left over from an era when you would not be allowed to hold a university position if you claimed that the authors made up most of their material. But I am arguing exactly that. Much of what is found in the NT is purposeful fiction. One can often recognize material as credibly deriving from earlier sources by the incredibility of the author having invented it, such as parts of Mark.

Rather than play the appeal to authority game, why not address my arguments directly rather than just ‘someone else says something different’?

In any case, you are not getting what I am saying. Paul made these things up. When challenged about the resurrection, he came up with an impressive list of witnesses and tacked himself on at the end in a qualified manner to identify himself as an apostle (which is why he mention other apostles immediately before himself) and having special knowledge. 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 serves the dual purpose of justifying the fact of the resurrection and establishing Paul as an authority. Note that Paul uses the word apostle in the sense of a missionary delivering a message, not one of the Twelve that he identifies separately.

1 Corinthians 15:3
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received…
[…]
7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. 9 For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

Note the humility game here. He does that in 2 Corinthians 12 as well, refusing to boast about this incredible thing he is boasting about.

That Paul wants to be identified as an apostle can also be seen here and he links it to having seen Jesus. Apparently, he has been challenged on his claim of being a legitimate apostle.

1 Corinthians 9:1 Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are not you my workmanship in the Lord? 2 If to others I am not an apostle, at least I am to you, for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.

Could those 500+ witnesses claim to all be apostles with their own gospels just because they saw Jesus? Paul surely did not intend any such thing to be understood. Yet here he says that he is an apostle because he saw Jesus. Clearly, he does not mean that his encounter with Jesus was the same as that of the 500+ witnesses.

In 2 Corinthians, his authority as an apostle has been challenged, this time apparently by some big guns in the apostle business. He needs bigger artillery to shoot back. And so he comes up with the ‘third heaven’ story in which he is taken to heaven and gets his knowledge and consequent authority right from the Savior’s mouth. No vision from heaven. This is a direct encounter in heaven, which counts for a whole lot more.

Saying that 1 Corinthians 15:8 and 2 Corinthians 12 are the same event or different is meaningless. There were no events. Paul made it all up to justify his authority to preach ‘his’ gospel, coming up with an even more extreme claim in 2 Corinthians because of the more extreme challenge.

Those ‘very chiefest’ apostles must have done quite a number on his claims if he ranks them out like this.

1 Corinthians 11
13 For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. 14 And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. 15 So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.

He needs something really impressive to re-establish his reputation. And so the ‘third heaven’ story, fleshing out his prior claims that his seeing Jesus was something special making him an apostle with his own gospel. But the truth is that none of his stories are true, just elaborations on the theme of Paul as special apostle with a new gospel.

Paul tells us that Jesus ‘was seen’ (the actual meaning of the word)

No, when the aorist form is used with the dative as in 1 Cor 15, it more accurately translates to "appeared" "made himself seen" or "showed himself."

The verb is in the passive voice. It is the object that is doing the seeing, not being shown anything by the subject.

�The dative is used for three purposes:

1. as the indirect object of a verb
2. how or with what something is done.
3. relationships of place where and time when
4. These relationships can be expressed by the English prepositions to or for, with or by, and in or at.�
https://daedalus.umkc.edu/FirstGreekBook/JWW_FGB3.html

An indirect object is a prepositional phrase. In English the preposition would be the indirect object and the object of the preposition the direct object. But in Greek the entire phrase is encapsulated in the case of the noun. As noted above, the preposition ‘by’ is perfectly legitimate. There is nothing about the dative case of a noun that changes a passive verb into a different active one. X ‘was seen by’ a witness is exactly the kind of thing one would say concerning what a witness claimed. Since it is a witness list that is being presented, that is, since it is the claim that these witnesses saw Jesus that is important, the passive voice and dative case is appropriate and ‘was seen by’ is the proper translation.

Still more coming but not so soon

[YahWhat]

If they could not tell the difference, why insist that they claimed to have seen it with their minds, which is what you want Paul to want the Corinthians to believe.

They didn't claim to "see it with their minds." That's what you're claiming they said. All they claimed is that the Risen Jesus "appeared" or "was revealed" to them. I'm arguing from the inference that the appearance to Paul was necessarily a vision/revelation he had while Jesus was located in heaven. Paul makes no distinction regarding the nature, quality or type of appearances. Paul gives no evidence of a physically resurrected Jesus on earth or him being experienced in a more "physical" way than a vision/revelation. Therefore, the inference to the best explanation is that Paul was saying all the appearances were of the same type i.e. spiritual visions/revelations from heaven like he had.

As I have said earlier, these were always about some message being conveyed. What was the message supposedly given to the 500+ witnesses? Did they each get a private gospel like Paul? If the message they got was simply that Jesus was in heaven, so what? Jesus, who according to Paul came from heaven, went back to heaven again as a spirit. What good does that do anyone? How does this relate to the promised resurrection of all those who did not originally come from heaven?

Jesus was seen as the "firstfruits" of the general resurrection - 1 Cor 15:20 and was expected to return soon. Paul and Mark both thought Jesus' return was soon/imminent. After that, the other gospel authors mute/subdue the imminent eschatological passages which is pretty much non-existent by the time the Gospel of John was written.

But a physical bodily resurrection is something people can relate to. Not just the divine Jesus going back home again, but the human Jesus coming out of the grave. If that is possible, then it is possible for ordinary humans to get resurrected.

Which is consistent with the data we have in the gospels where the story evolves over time towards an empty tomb and a more physical/corporeal Jesus.

No, the story did not grow over time.

Yes it does. There's no empty tomb mentioned in 1 Cor 15 when we'd expect it since he was trying to convince the Corinthians who doubted the resurrection and also explain "with what type of body do they come?" Mark has no witnesses but has the empty tomb = growth. Matthew has witnesses = growth. Luke places all the appearances in Jerusalem (not Galilee) and they are much more physical where the Risen Jesus eats fish and has his "flesh and bone" body inspected. Then, he ascends to heaven! = growth. In John, we get the Doubting Thomas story and the belief that Jesus is basically God = growth.

How is that not growth?

Mark was Jewish, not gentile, as can be seen by subtle references such as the fourth cup at Seder being for Elijah. Matthew was not only Jewish, he was writing to an observant Jewish audience. Where does the gentile part fit in?

Mark was writing for gentiles! He has to explain Jewish customs in Mark 7 and explain that "Preparation Day" was the "day before the Sabbath." It's unclear if Matthew was writing for a Jewish audience due to his gospel actually being quite anti-Jewish at times. What is more likely is that he was writing for a second generation Christian group that may have been still living in a largely Jewish community. We don't really know though. Luke was certainly writing for gentiles and John was writing well after Christianity and Judaism had formally split due to the numerous times the author uses the term "the Jews." Was he unaware that both Jesus and his followers were Jewish? Haha!

Paul needs to establish himself as an apostle even though he was not around when all those other (alleged) witnesses were.

Not being around doesn't mean he thought the appearances were different. I've already refuted the reference "as to one untimely born." This, in no way, indicates that he thought the appearances were different in nature.

Prove that they would not have made such a distinction.

This is shifting of the burden of proof. You made the claim now support it. I supported my claim by showing how this was a visionary culture where people thought they really "saw" things in visions/dreams. They did not make distinctions like modern people do.

By being too late, his experience was not of the same character.

Non-sequitur. The timing of the appearance has no bearing on its nature. Jesus can appear in a vision immediately just as he can appear in one 3 years later. Just because the experience was "later" it does not follow that it was understood to be different.

This points to Paul using horao in a different sense for himself than for the witnesses.

Haha! Utter rubbish! He uses the same form ophthe for each one therefore he was distinguishing them? Wow!

They saw it with their eyes on earth. He did not.

Oh so now Paul didn't see Jesus with his eyes?! You're talking out both sides of your mouth.

More to come.

You can have the last reply. I'm done wasting my time. You just keep saying the same things over and over when they have already been sufficiently addressed.

[Imprecise Interrupt]

by Paul at a later time when it was no longer possible to see Jesus with the eyes as all those other witnesses did.

Let me know when you actually find a passage from Paul which says this.

1 Corinthians 15. Now show me a passage that mentions Jesus ascending in spirit form immediately. Or waiting until the third day. Or whatever.

Paul was ‘untimely born’, brought into the Christian fold, too late for that.

A reference to "timing" obviously, and he was talking about his vocational birth where he ceased persecuting Christians and started preaching to the gentiles.

Exactly as I have been saying been saying and in fact said in the sentence you quoted.

‘Resurrection appearance’ is an inaccurate phrase. Nowhere in any canonical NT literature does anyone ever see the resurrection.

By "resurrection appearance" I mean an appearance of the Resurrected Christ. This is just pedantic nit-picking.

Not at all. You want to insist that either Paul saw the risen Jesus walking around or nobody did. And it is all based on demanding that a word with multiple meanings must always have the same (secondary) meaning all the time, despite that clearly not being the case in context. Try addressing the arguments I am making instead of just playing games with words.

The witnesses Paul cites in 1 Corinthians saw the risen Jesus in the flesh (Paul claims) without which his argument has no power against those skeptics, the point you do not want to address. Paul came on the scene too late to have made any such claim for himself.

Where does Paul say this or are you ready to admit you're reading in the chronology from Luke/Acts here?

No chronology from Luke or Acts (BTW those two sources do not say the exactly the same thing. Acts is intentionally different to cover up a problem, just like Acts is about in general.) Jesus was obviously not around. Paul never says why. It is you who wants to talk about an ascension when Paul only ever says raised from the dead. The last thing Paul would want to do would be to raise uncomfortable questions about the Jesus story. Jesus is not around anymore (and as per reading Mark critically, he apparently never was ever since he died). Paul’s thing is that Jesus came from heaven. Otherwise Paul cold not have his colorful and important for his status as an apostle ‘third heaven' story. So Jesus went back to heaven again. When? How? ‘Don’t ask embarrassing questions, people. I told you I saw Jesus and that makes me an apostle! So there! Anyone who says otherwise is an agent of Satan!’ (2 Cor 11) All that matters for Paul’s gospel is that Jesus was raised from the dead. Physically, otherwise it is meaningless.

If Galatians 1:16 is supposed to be the same as Corinthians 15:8, then obviously they are not the same type as the other witnesses or Paul would have not needed to qualify his experience ‘as to one untimely born’, that is, years later.

Ok, originally you argued that Paul meant both he and everyone else "saw Jesus with their eyes" due to him using horao/ophthe but now, after realizing the logic of my argument, you're entertaining the possibility that his appearance was different as in it was not a physical seeing with the eyes?

So is this a tacit admission that, at least, Paul was not claiming to "have seen" Jesus with his eyes? But realize, if you admit this, then it necessarily follows that "not physically seeing Jesus with your eyes" still counted as a "resurrection appearance" and you must concede the argument. If Paul can have a vision/revelation of Jesus and claim it as a "resurrection appearance" then it follows that the other disciples could have claimed the same thing.

Absolute nonsense. You are the one demanding that horao must have the same meaning every time it is used. Your insistence on the phrase ‘resurrection appearance’ shows that. I have been pointing out for a long time now that the word has multiple meanings and that Paul is careful to distinguish his experience from theirs by being at a much different time. If it was the same type of experience why would he need to distinguish them at all?

If the witnesses only had a vision from heaven, Paul’s argument about resurrection flops. They had to have seen Jesus walking around in his body, thereby connecting Jesus to their own mortal state or the resurrection of Jesus has no relevance to them. For Paul to have seen Jesus walking around in the body would not work because it would raise the question of ‘how come nobody else is seeing him these days?’ It had to have been of a different type or Paul’s argument fails again.

Paul uses the handy multiple meaning horao that connects to the original witness experience, but also allows Paul’s experience to be of an even more powerful kind, a special kind of seeing Jesus that give Paul authority to be an apostle and preach ‘his’ gospel. It has to be a different kind of experience or it does not have the special character Paul needs to make him special. Paul does not want to imply that the 500+ witnesses all received their own special gospels.

If either or both are supposed to be the same as 2 Corinthians 12 then Paul sees Jesus in the third heaven and Paul is there with him, being told ‘his’ gospel. There is no broadcast from heaven.

You've been unable to support your assertion that 2 Cor 12 was the resurrection appearance mentioned in 1 Cor 15:8. Why didn't Paul mention that important bit of information when he was describing the vision he had? Obviously, it was a reference to another vision and not his conversion experience.

I did not make any such claim. I have been saying two things about it. One is that in 2 Corinthians 12, Paul claims an experience that is not at all what the witnesses had in 1 Corinthians 15 and that it is not describable as a vison from heaven. Nobody thinks all those people went up to the third heaven, do they? The other thing I have been saying is that Paul was making it up as he went along in order to meet continuing challenges. Paul’s experience in 1 Corinthians 15 and in2 Corinthians 12 are not the same thing because neither one of them ever happened. He simply told the story that was suitable for the degree of criticism he was receiving. In 1 Cor he thought a simple claim of having seen Jesus with the implication that Jesus made him a special apostle entitled to his own gospel was sufficient. But in 2 Cor he was up against heavier criticism from the ‘very chiefest’ apostles and needed to come up with a more elaborate claim. But he made them both up to suit the circumstances. The story in 2 Cor never happened. He did not invent those details until he had to. You are acting as if all of this was somehow real. It is not real and does not have to be totally consistent.

Again, the point to keep in mind is that Paul is making it up as he goes along to claim special authority to have ‘his’ own gospel that is different from others.In 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians and Galatians, his authority was challenged and he responded with made up stories. Trying to connect one to the other is like lassoing smoke. There is not really anything substantial there to connect with except the common theme of ‘proving’ Paul’s authority to have ‘his’ gospel.

"Making it up as he goes along" doesn't equal "therefore, he thought the appearances were different."

He did not think the events were different because he was just inventing stories to justify telling everyone a gospel of his own invention. He did not think the experiences were the same or different because he invented them as needed. They never happened.

There is nothing at all in Pauline literature about him getting visions from heaven.

That's what visions are by definition. They're given by God who resides in heaven. By the time Paul was writing, the Risen Jesus was believed to be in heaven so where else was he supposed to appear from?

Yet in 2 Corinthians 12, Paul is very clear about being in the third heaven, not receiving visions broadcast from heaven. Your claim is false.

In Luke 1, the angel Gabriel says that he was sent to speak with Zechariah. Later this is called a vision. Are we to understand that the angel was not really there, but only a broadcast from heaven? Since he says that he was sent, are we to infer that angels are only broadcasts from heaven and do not really exist? The only reasonable interpretation is that the angel was really there, sent to deliver a message, which is what angels do, messenger being the exact meaning of the word aggelos.

Strong’s defines ‘vision’ (optasia) as:
I the act of exhibiting one's self to view
II a sight, a vision, an appearance presented to one whether asleep or awake

In Luke 1, the angel exhibits himself to view, pointing to the first definition. He was really there exhibiting himself.

In Luke 24, the two men telling the women that Jesus is not there are later called a vision of angels. Are we to assume that the angels were not really there? And clearly the women thought they were there, even bowing to them because they were afraid. Yet they refer to the experience as a vision. Obviously, it is not the case that a vision necessarily must be from heaven and not really there.

In Acts 26, Luke has Paul refer to a light from heaven and a disembodied voice and calls it a heavenly vision. He is explicitly qualifying the vision as heavenly. This does not require all uses of the word vision to imply ‘from heaven’ or Luke would not have needed to qualify it.

When Paul provides any details, he claims that he went to heaven and got information there. It sounds like he is intentionally avoiding the suspicious claim of a vision from heaven which would be dismissed as imaginary just like the claims of witnesses in 1 Corinthians 15 would be dismissed as imaginary if they were presented as ‘visions from heaven’, which obviously they were not intended to be understood as.

If Paul was actually concerned about his claims being "dismissed as imaginary" then why does he leave in the part about "Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows"?

Because fixing on one or the other might turn off some portion of the readers. Those who were familiar with 1 Enoch could accept being bodily in the third heaven since it is described there in quite physical terms. Those not familiar with 1 Enoch might be puzzled or put off by it. But what Paul says is “whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows� (2 Cor 12:3) He avoids the problem by saying that God knows, making it to be understood as something real. Which was his point all along, that he really got special apostleship and a private gospel from Jesus. The details were made up and enhanced each time he was challenged.

More to come. When depends on when the rain stops and I can work.

[Imprecise Interrupt]

The Road to Damascus stories (three different ones BTW) are totally unlike the prophetic visions in the OT. In those stories, an individual is given information in the form of prophecies which he is supposed to tell people about. In Acts, Paul is knocked down and blinded and told by Jesus to stop the persecution. Paul is not given any knowledge to tell to other people. On the contrary, he is given the details of an already fully formed Christianity by other Christians. Luke is plainly avoiding the idea of Paul being given knowledge by God, Jesus etc. in order to get around Paul’s claims in his letters that he did get special knowledge from God and/or Jesus that was different from what was given the Apostles. Not at all like the visions of the OT.

You're engaging in the fallacy of trying to find an exact match but ignoring the relevant overall theme. Compare Gen. 31:11-13, 46:2, Ex. 3:2-10 with Acts 9, 22, and 26.

On the contrary, you are demanding that a word always mean what you want it to mean even though that is not part of the definition and I have shown important counter examples. Again you insist on mere word games and refuse to engage actual arguments.

Genesis 31:11-13 is about a dream are about visions while asleep (εν τω υπνω ‘in the sleep’) that is, in a dream, not a waking vision from heaven.

Genesis 46:2 says ‘in visions of the night’ (εν ο�αματι της νυκτος). Again, in a dream, not a waking vision from heaven.

Exodus 3
2 And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. 3 And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.� 4 When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!� And he said, “Here I am.� 5 Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.� 6 And he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.� And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

The angel of the Lord (or of God) is a frequent figure in the OT, speaking for God in the first person. It generally but not always represents God being actually present. The angel of the Lord does sometimes speak directly out of heaven and it is so noted (e.g., Genesis 22:15) but often the clear intent is that the angel of the Lord was really there, e.g., Numbers 22, where he stands in front of Balaam’s donkey, or Judges 2:1, where the angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bochim, or Judges 6:11, where the angel of the Lord sat under the terebinth at Ophrah, or later in Judges 6 where the angel of the Lord does very physical things with his staff. Gideon even says “now I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face�. (6:22) In Judges 13 the angel of the Lord is presented as being so physically present as to be offered food. There are other examples but this should be sufficient.

Back to Exodus 3

The angel of the Lord is seen in the burning bush. Moses really sees the bush burning and has every reason to believe it is real, if amazing. God speaks to Moses out of the bush, not out of heaven. Moses definitely thinks he is looking at God because he hides his face, being afraid to look at God. In short, this is presented as something real. BTW the word translated as ‘appeared’ is good old ωφθη (see something stare-worthy) and the word translated as ‘great sight’ is ο�αμα, ‘vision’. Yet it is not considered to be from heaven but right in front of Moses.

Of the three examples you mention, two of them are about dreams where it would be unreasonable to expect a physical presence. And in the third, there is a physical presence. Do you actually read the passages you cite or just copy these things from someplace else?

Acts explicitly identifies Paul’s vision – in which he saw nothing and heard only a disembodied voice – as visions from heaven, which certainly fits. But it does not always fit, as you want it to.

The identifiable theme in the Old Testament for a "call vision" is:

1. Address or call.
2. Answer with question.
3. Introduction with charge.

The vision is similar to what happens in Job 4:12-16, Isa 6, Dan. 10:4-21, Ezek. 1:1-3:15, Amos 7.1-9:10, 1 Enoch 14, 4 Ezra 3:1-9, 25.

The "bright light" and "falling down" theme is found in Ezekiel's vision.

Ez. 1:4
I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north—an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light.

Ez. 1:27-28
I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him. Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. When I saw it, I fell facedown, and I heard the voice of one speaking.

Daniel 10:7 uses ὀπτασίαν (optasia) like Paul does in 2 Cor 12:1 and Acts 26:19.

"I, Daniel, alone saw the vision; the people who were with me did not see the vision, though a great trembling fell upon them, and they fled and hid themselves. So I was left alone to see this great vision."

Compare this to Acts 9:7

The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one.

Deut 4:12
Then the LORD spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice.

All of this is irrelevant because what is presented in Acts is deliberately different from what Paul said. Paul claimed special knowledge received directly from Jesus that other people did not have. In other words, the Apostles were wrong! Acts is all about patching up and smoothing over all the problems raised by earlier scriptures. Paul saying the Apostles were wrong was a big problem. And so the dramatic knock down and blind and voice from the sky scene (which gets repeated twice more so you don’t forget it) in which Paul is converted into an existing fully formed Christianity instead of being given his own different version by Jesus. Looking for precedent for Acts has no bearing on what Paul claimed.

Seeing something in their minds is not going to cut it. And Paul saying they only saw it with their minds is definitely not going to cut it with an audience already skeptical of his claims.

Argument from incredulity and assuming they would have made the distinction between eye/mind seeing. Two fallacious appeals.

Throwing out labels is not going to cut it either. You are totally unable to address my arguments and are doing everything to avoid facing them.

If the (hypothetical) witnesses in 1 Corinthians thought they really experienced Jesus in the flesh, they would have said that they really experienced Jesus in the flesh and not say that they saw him only with their minds. The (hypothetical) person who told Paul about it would have reported that they said that they really experienced Jesus in the flesh and Paul would have told the Corinthians that all those people really experienced Jesus in the flesh. There would be no question whatsoever that they really experienced Jesus in the flesh, which is of course is critical to Paul’s argument against the skeptics.

They wouldn't have even considered "in the flesh" because:

1 Cor 15:50
"Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God."

1 Cor 1:29
"No flesh (sarx) shall glory before God."

Col. 2:11
"In him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ"

Flesh is sinful - Romans 8.

More word games? Is that the best you have? A bodily resurrection is very plainly what Paul is saying in ` Corinthians 15 as is clear from the image of the seed being buried and becoming a plant and the body being sown and raised. Dismissing this as just another common plant reference, like your blogger did, is deliberately ignoring powerful evidence right in front of you face. But then that is what your entire argument consists of

If Jesus were not bodily resurrected and seen with the eyes by all those witnesses, and thereby connecting with the mortal reader, Paul’s argument about this signifying that the righteous will be resurrected falls apart. ‘Jesus, who came from heaven, went back to heaven when he died. So what? What else was I supposed to expect? I did not come from heaven. What does that have to do with me?’ But a bodily resurrection is not just ‘something to be expected’. It is a miracle and a confirmation that God can and will raise the righteous dead. If Jesus was not seen in bodily form, there is no miracle and no resurrection of the dead. But this is another argument that you refuse to address.

The witnesses are clearly supposed to have seen Jesus with their eyes or Paul’s argument falls apart.

Have you even been paying attention to the debate we're having? That's not "clear" at all actually.

All I have seen is you trying to claim that horao always means seeing with the mind even though that is the primary meaning and the obvious one that would be understood by the readers in Corinth, and to try to claim that dreams, visions from heaven, visions not from heaven that are taken as perfectly real and vision in heaven and special information given to Paul by Jesus are all the same thing.

And again, you want to dismiss my arguments without addressing them because you are unable to address them. On a debate site like this, you have to come up with more than copying canned arguments from books and websites. The truth is that you have never seen arguments like the ones I am presenting and you are unable to address them on your own without doing a copy/paste and editing it to look like your own stuff.

Galatians 1 says that God told Paul that he was on the wrong track. Jesus was the way. That is the revelation in Galatian 1.

Yes, this is an explicit reference to Paul's conversion experience just as in 1 Cor 15:8 where he says Jesus "appeared" to him.

Note the genetic link:

Gal. 1:13
For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it.

1 Cor 15:9
For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul gets to see Jesus in the third heaven and is given a new private Gospel.

This was a different vision, not his conversion experience.

Trying quoting me in context. From Post 111

• “Galatians 1 says that God told Paul that he was on the wrong track. Jesus was the way. That is the revelation in Galatian 1. In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul gets to see Jesus in the third heaven and is given a new private Gospel. That is where his authority allegedly comes from. If you want Galatians and 2 Corinthians to be separate, then Paul sees Jesus in the third heaven. That is how he justifies himself as an apostle like the apostles he mentions immediately preceding himself in the list in 1 Corinthians 15. If you want to conflate Galatians 1 and 2 Corinthians 12, then it is still the case, that Paul saw Jesus in the third heaven and got his authority as an apostle that way.
  
  The thing to remember is that Paul makes it all up as he goes along whenever he is challenged. Looking for literal word by word consistency is a lost cause. The point still remains is that for Paul to have meant that all those witnesses only saw Jesus in their minds, is doubly self-defeating. It adds doubt to the idea of Jesus being raised from the dead instead of supporting it. And if taken seriously as actual visions from heaven it removes the connection between Jesus being raised from the dead (directly to heaven where he started out) and the future resurrection of the righteous which it is supposed to prove.�

None of these things happened. They are all the different stories Paul invented to justify his special status as an apostle with his own gospel when challenged. There were no different visions because there were no visions. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says he also saw Jesus later on in order to attach himself to the label ‘apostle’ that he mentions immediately prior to his claim.

Let us imagine that Paul really saw visions.

In 1 Corinthians 9 Paul said
1 “Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are not you my workmanship in the Lord? 2 If to others I am not an apostle, at least I am to you, for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.

Paul connects being an apostle to having seen Jesus. Recall that Paul uses the word ‘apostle’ to mean ‘missionary’, not necessarily the Twelve. The Corinthians being Paul’s workmanship indicates that he is preaching to them. There are those denying that Paul is an apostle. If he were preaching the orthodox version of the gospel, why should they say he is not an apostle? He is preaching something different. Where does he get the authority to preach something different? From having seen Jesus. The 500+ witnesses saw Jesus. Are they entitled to preach their own versions of the gospel? Of course not. Paul seeing Jesus is necessarily different in character from the 500+ or he would have no authority to be an apostle.

In 1 Corinthians 15, is Paul talking about having seen Jesus. Is this a different vision from the one in 1 Corinthians 15? It seems that it cannot be, since in both places he associates it with having become an apostle. And in 1 Cor 9, we see that it is a different gospel he got from Jesus. Did Paul get several different versions of his gospel? Of course not, he would have gotten it once without further changes.

In 2 Corinthians, Paul has been challenged again. He tells of having been taken to the third heaven and being given special knowledge there. Is this knowledge different from what he refers to in 1 Cor 9? Of course not. Paul got one special gospel. The reason Paul related his third heaven experience is because he was challenged about his gospel again. The challenge would have been in respect to whatever he preached in and before the 1 Corinthians letter. Paul needs to strengthen his claim of having the authority to have preached what he did. This again supports the point that what Paul learned in the third heaven is not any more than what he learned in the 1 Corinthians 9 seeing of Jesus. That means that the third heaven vision had to have been before the 1 Corinthians letter. It would have to have been even before his earlier visit to Corinth since 1 Cor 9 already mentions his authority having been challenged.

It is clear that Paul must have meant that seeing Jesus mentioned in 1 Cor 9, and seeing Jesus mentioned in 1 Cor 15 and seeing Jesus in 2 Cor 12 all refer to the same event. In addition, Galatians 1 puts the mention of God revealing Jesus to Paul so that he can preach, at the end of a long diatribe against believing any gospel but Paul’s, clearly makes this event identical to the others.

End of imagining.

As I have been saying all along, these events are not different and neither are they the same because none of them ever happened. They are all about Paul reacting to contradiction that he is the apostle preaching the one and only real gospel.

More to come.

[Imprecise Interrupt]

And there is still that ‘that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day’ issue. The spirit of Jesus had to hang around buried (a spirit was buried?) until the third day waiting to be raised up to heaven. Was God busy elsewhere? How would anyone know it was the third day if the only communication was visions broadcast from heaven?

The "third day" reference comes from the Scriptures, Hosea 6:2 for instance. Jonah was in the whale for three days. The "three days" is just a theological symbol, not an actual reference to a historical passing of time. Jesus died, was buried, was raised (to heaven) and then he "appeared" "made himself seen" "showed himself" "was revealed" - Gal. 1:16.

Just a theological symbol…

So when Paul says -

1 Corinthians 15
3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

- the Corinthians would never possibly think that dying, being buried and being raised on the third day could represent a sequence of physical events. On the contrary, they would have read it exactly like that. Jesus died, was buried and was raised from the dead on the third day. Lots of people saw him. With their eyes. That is the straightforward reading of 1 Cor 15 and exactly how the Corinthians would have taken it. What possible reason would they have for thinking otherwise? What possibly reason would Paul have for wanting them to think otherwise?

Notice that Paul has ‘died for our sins’ and ‘raised on the third day’ both ‘in accordance with the scriptures’. Is dying for our sins just a theological symbol as well? What exactly is this alleged theological symbol ‘raised on the third day’ a symbol of? And exactly how does this exact phrase symbolize that whatever it is?

Jesus dying ‘for our sins’ and being raised from the dead are the heart and soul of Pauline theology. To say “raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures� is not just a throwaway. It is emphasizing the physical nature of the resurrection that is all important to Paul being taken seriously by the Corinthians and to his argument that the resurrection of Jesus relates to the future resurrection of ordinary mortals.

Mark, who we know has read 1 Corinthians, changes it to ‘after three days’. This is avoid getting caught up in a common superstition that the spirit of the dead person hangs around for three days trying to get back in the body until decomposition starts to set in. In the Gospel of John, note that Jesus deliberately waits until four days to raise Lazarus, when the dead body is already smelling.

But in Mark, the time from the death of Jesus shortly before the Sabbath beings (that is, Friday afternoon) until early on the first day of the week (Sunday morning) cannot possibly be described as ‘after three days’. If Mark had made up the story, he would have made it ‘after three days’, a detail he consciously added. Notice that from the crucifixion of Jesus until the empty tomb and the young man saying Jesus went to Galilee, the story is almost totally believable. The only exceptions are the tearing of the temple curtain and a Roman soldier calling Jesus the Son of God, both easily seen as invention.

Mark’s ‘after three days’ does not fit Mark’s actual story. But if one wanted to fit a scriptural reference to what Mark actually described, ‘on the third day’ might just work, especially if one only knew the approximate details of Friday, Saturday, Sunday. It is possible Paul knew that original story and used it.

Matthew’s reference to the Jonah story is another element of his reworking of Mark’s story to lend credibility to the resurrection story. Mark has Jesus say Truly, I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation (Mk. 8L12) No sign? What about the resurrection??? But remember that Mark’s Gospel does not have a resurrection, only the claim of one. Matthew has to fix this one. And what better way than with a scriptural reference, Matthew’s favorite way of doing business.

Matthew 12
38 Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.� 39 But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

There! An explicit and dramatic reference to the resurrection in place of Mark’s nothing.

‘Three days and three nights’ is not really any longer than Mark’s ‘after three days’. But Matthew is not done fixing Mark. He realizes that Mark’s day and a half story does not work with either his nor Mark’s three day plus timing for the resurrection.

Mark refers to it almost being the day of Preparation for the Sabbath and almost the Sabbath itself starting at sundown when the request is made for the body of Jesus. And Mark has the women go to the tomb on Sunday morning to perform the burial rites that would not have been allowed on the Sabbath.

Matthew makes no mention of the Sabbath approaching when Jesus dies. And Matthew gives no reason for the visit to the tomb on Sunday. The only time Matthew comes close to mentioning the Sabbath is here.

Matthew 27:62 The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate

Why refer to the Sabbath as the day after the day of Preparation, when he did not use either term relative to the death of Jesus? And is it not a little odd to have the chief priests and Pharisees going to Pilate on the Sabbath? Now imagine that ‘that is, after the day of Preparation’ was a later insertion by a scribe who was unhappy with the lack of any day of Preparation or Sabbath in Matthew.

Matthew 27:62 The next day, [strike]that is, after the day of Preparation,[/strike] the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate

By removing any reference to the crucifixion being on the day of Preparation and the onset of the Sabbath and the need for burial rites on Sunday, Matthew can make the time from the death of Jesus until the resurrection on Sunday morning (this time with witnesses) ambiguous, Matthew can have his three days and three nights be literally true. As with the two-animal entry into Jerusalem and the tombs of the saints opening at the death of Jesus but the saints not coming out until after the resurrection, Matthew wants his prophecies to be fulfilled literally.

No ‘theological symbol’ without meaning, but a careful and intentional use of a scriptural reference for a specific purpose. Just like in Paul.

John goes even further, addressing the problem that Mark started about the impossible Sanhedrin trial on the first night of Passover. John has Jesus die on the afternoon of the day before Passover, not on the first day of Passover as the other Gospels do. John leaves out all Seder references, as would be expected with the timeframe change. He also makes almost no references to ‘on the third day’, ‘after three days’ or ‘three days and three nights’. But the real stroke of brilliance is the reference to it being the preparation day for the ‘great’ (μεγάλη) Sabbath. Does that mean that the first day of Passover was also a weekly Sabbath or simply that it was the first day of Passover on which Sabbath rules applied? Note also that John has Jesus covered in myrrh and aloes before being buried, obviating any need for burial rites. And as with Matthew, John gives no reason for visiting the tomb on Sunday. John totally avoids the third/three day issue because it is a distraction.

And the verb has two meanings and Paul distinguishes his experience as too late to see the risen Jesus in the flesh. There is no contradiction between the witnesses seeing Jesus in the flesh with their eyes, without which Paul’s arguments fail, and Paul seeing Jesus later one, maybe with the mind or maybe with the eyes in the third heaven. Paul’s experience was definitely different from the witnesses.

Lol! This assumes an intervening ascension between the apostles sightings and Paul's vision. Where does Paul make note of such an intervening ascension?

Answer: He doesn't so you're necessarily appealing to Luke/Acts for this chronological distinction.

No, you are appealing to Luke and Acts in order to have an ascension. Paul very clearly refers to a physical bodily resurrection, despite your refusal to deal with the arguments for that. But the risen Jesus is obviously not around anymore. Paul has Jesus come from heaven, so he must have gone back to heaven. The last thing Paul would want to do would be to raise the question of nobody seeing the risen Jesus anymore. Recall that a straightforward reading of Mark 16 raises serious suspicions about there ever having been a risen Jesus despite the claim. Why would Paul want to go there?

So where in Paul is your support for the idea of a spiritual ascension? Besides word games that is. If the (hypothetical) witnesses only saw Jesus with their minds and they could not tell the difference between that and seeing Jesus with their eyes, why would they say they only saw Jesus with their minds? If the ascension was only spiritual, how would anyone know that? But you do not answer questions for which you cannot find canned answers.

Still more to come.